Chamonix Trip Report - Day 3 - Brevent and Flegere

We awoke with a start early the next morning and looked out the window to just see the sun hitting the top of Mont Blanc. It was a perfect bluebird day. I had been feeling pretty far from home but its amazing how even on the other side of the Atlantic, once I had my trusty boots buckled up tight, polypropolyen against my skin, my skis on my feet I felt right at home among the rocks, trees and trams of Chamonix. We started by walking from the hotel up to the Telecabine Chamonix-Planpraz in our new Technical Extreme gear and our rented 85mm underfoot Moment skis. No line
whatsoever and we had a bin to ourselves. The view of the mountain world from the PlanPraz was mind blowing. Clouds swirled below and bad ass black crows swooped and hovered over the exposure with the Mont Blanc massif as a backdrop. Cold snow crystals floated in the blue sky glinting in the sun. The Telepherique Planpraz- Brevent started from a location candalevered out over the cliffs and went up to an impossible summit in one fell swoop...No towers, no nothing, just rock, snow and air. As we went up I spotted my line. It was a series of untracked faces, skiers right, in between a cat track that weaved its way down Piste Charles Bozon. It was difficult to figure out what was open, what was closed, what was off-piste. Some places are actually posted as closed, but you can still go. Some places have no ropes or signs but are still very dangerous. We had no beacons. I was ducking ropes to get to my line. The snow was like no other I had ever seen before... I was a meter of dust on crust. and by dust I mean it was the lightest snow I had every seen. Lighter than 40 years of skiing in CO and UT, and by crust I mean that it was pretty icy. When you skied the thigh deep snow you could not even feel it on your legs and your skies jumped around underneath like you where skiing on some set up death cookies.

It wasn't epic good, but it was epic weird. I expected my line to sluff, and sluff it did, but I made the decision to ski with the moving snow as it was so light and my pitches were short enough. The WildSnow swirled up over and around me as I dropped into my first off-piste line in Chamonix. Wont forget it. We zigzagged our way across the ski area in awe of the possibilities and the differences from what what were used to. At the Index chair at Flegere it got windy and there was a lot of snow to transport. We saw some foot deep slabs cut loose spontaneously from the chair. We skied one off-piste line here carefully picking safe terrain. On the next lap the chair was closed to avalanches.

What a satisfying day. We didn't care about our luggage anymore. We knew we were good to go. Jill and I reveled in sharing this adventure, the comraderee, friendship and love in an apres ski bliss as we recounted each run over beer, cheese and meat.