Take two! This time we had reservations in advance (but ironically there were no queues anyway). It was an astonishingly cold on the walk to the top of the Marbree, in the lee of the Aiguille Marbree, given how hot it was yesterday, but this was an early start, and we were at about 3300m, in the shade... Luckily it was only 10 mins or so before then we came out into the sun and the top of the Marbree. It was decided to climb up a bit higher than the normal entrance, to get to some sunny, steep looking slopes. And it was quite steep, approaching 50 degrees for the first 50m or so where we were going to start the descent. Unfortunately, we didn't really wait long enough for the snow to soften up properly and it was a mix of hard and soft snow, which made things interesting (read: pretty scary). I started down with my ice-axe in my hand, just in case. It's tricky riding with a classic piolet, you have to take care not to stab yourself on each turn! The snow was tricky enough that I had to really gird myself for each jump turn, knowing that a mistake could lead to a long slide, and even though I had the axe I wasn't totally confident in using it while riding (or while falling!). After about 50m it softened to 45 degrees but the snow still made it tricky. The lower we got the softer the snow, of course, but it took a good 500m vertical to really get proper spring snow - party because the clouds came in about halfway down, which stopped the snow heating up properly. Getting near the bottom we started to encounter patches of grass and rock, had to do a couple of walks but after that we skied right down through some nice summer-only villages to Planpincieux where we got the bus back to the bottom of the Palud lift. We all had lunch and then Benoit and I skied back down the Noire side of the Valley Blanche (which had lovely snow and not half as skied as the French side) while Bob drove back. A great day - challenging and a bit scary, but super satisfying.
More pics here...
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