Seeing the difference in culture through the subject of skiing

Check out this article covering steep skiing from the American perspective in Powder magazine. Click here.

And… Keep your eyes open for the next issue of Ernest Mag coming soon on the streets of Chamonix or ernestmag.com for an article showing you the French ditto. Click here.

 

Ceci est...- Jeff Foster

For anyone feeling down or for those of us searching for something mysteriously hidden in the future...

 

In Skijournal

Fredrik Schenholm shoot this picture at the Låktatjåkka hut close to Björkliden, Sweden, last year in Febuary. Now it is appearing in issue 4-3 of SkiJournal.

See more of Fredriks great photos and adventures at www.schenholm.com

Col de l'Aiguille Verte - direct

The adventure of the day for me was again set to the Argentiere basin. Col de l'Aiguille Verte has been looking really filled in, specially for being January, so I took a chance and went there today with filmer Bjarne Sahlen. He belayed me over the bergschrund and then stayed in the valley filming and taking pictures.

It was excellent conditions with chalky snow that’s easy to climb and great to ski. My plan was to do the normal route climbing the face in the middle and then traverse lookers right on the upper snowfields in to a hidden (on the picture) couloir. I have done it two years a go with David Rosenbarger and we had a great and steep run, but I have for years been looking at the direct line to the col to the right of the hanging glacier. Today the face was even more filled in than last time and I started talking to Bjarne on the radio while I was climbing. He thought he saw a kind of filled in line all the way to the top. It still was fairly thin, but it was better than I ever seen it so I thought I had to give it a try.

Col de l'Aiguille Verte is famous for being steep, but I got amazed on how much steeper the direct line where. Small and thin snow patches where quickly leading me to the top of the run, but I also had a hard time understanding if it was going to be possible to ski slopes as steep like that. I could feel the ice underneath the snow with my crampons for every step and was making sure to put my track in where I could find best snow coverage so I would have something to follow on the way down.

There where a couple of hard cruxes on the way down combined with really steep turns in good chalk snow. I had to do two short rappels over ice bulges and also about fifty meters of sidestepping where the snow was just to hard or to thin. Because of that I wouldn’t say I did a clean decent, but I had a great experience from a good challenge and I’m happy to ski a line like this early in the season. 

A short film is on its way and in the meantime check out Bjarne’s blog at endlessflow.posterous.com 

 The Line (Photo: Bjarne Sahlen) 

 Me skiing, the little dot in the right hand upper corner (Photo: Bjarne Sahlen)

 Looking up the face

 View over the Mt Blanc range from the summit

Taking a rest in the fog

Grand Montets ice climbing

Today I went to Grand Montets to spend a day with my good friend Linus Kulstad ice climbing. We chose some easy icefalls on the left branch of the Argentiere glacier having a fun day with good conditions. 

Easy day on Les Courtes

Today we had a good and quick run at Les Courtes NNE Face (aka the magnus face). The snow felt a little bit hollow on lower altitude but once we got on the face it felt good. The expected heat did not arrive either, making for a great and safe day on the mountain. The snow was chalky top to bottom.

Video footage coming soon…

 Dave working out

 The face

 Giulia keeping the boys behind

 The gang; Giulia Monego, John Minogue, Morgan Sahlen and David Rosenbarger

 Dave enjoying some good snow

 Morgan cruising

 Dave showing us how good it was

About the Swedish freeride wonder...

They came they skied the conquered

by Trey Cook hosting chamonixinsider.com

Good conditions, but getting warm

The last two days we have been getting wonderful pow skiing on Aiguille du Midi. On Wednesday we did Grand Envers starting in a blizzard. It was fairly sketchy doing the traverse on the ridge, but with some ropework we managed to make it safe enough. Midi to the first pitch took about an hour, which says something about how much snow it was. South facing aspects avalanched but everything facing west felt good. Amazing skiing awaited us with dry cold snow.

It kept on snowing with a quiet high isotherm during the night and yesterday we did one run on Petite Envers in excellent crème snow. We were fast, but it was already starting to feel warm on the lower slopes, making us take the decision of ending the day early again. A high pressure system is here now hopefully settling the snow making for a few days of good ski touring. 

 Christine Hargin, Stina Jakobsson and Felix Hentz enjoying good skiing

Felix Hentz surf style

pow skiing - with a dark touch

The New Year is here with great snow, especially in Italy. Courmayeur has been great the last week and I have been skiing loads of good snow with Felix, Max, Morgan and Stina. Heads up for a bad layer in the snowpack 1-0,5 meter down on northern aspects. We turned around after a small slide in the trees, showing us a really dangerous layer in the snow pack. We backed of and got a long warm hike back up to where we started. Sadly, other people where not as lucky as us and at least two people died later on that day. If powder skiing is heaven, avalanches are definitely hell. 

A new year

Chamonix is kind of dry on snow at the moment. But skiing is still nice. Two days ago I went up to Chatelard for some ice climbing with Guillaume. Conditions were ok, but not excellent. Yesterday I went up to check out the skiing conditions with one run on midi by my self and then a couple of runs with Stina at Brevent. We found some really good snow on the sheltered ridges.

It feels good being back on the skis, and I’m looking forward for the anticipated snow this week!