First tour up the Midi

Sun 23rd: Second powder day in a row... Missed the first due to it being a Saturday - seriously every Saturday is a Bluebird / powder day I swear.

Up at 3am for my only transfer of the day, knackered but happy to have the day to ski. After an hour of sleep I ran down the Midi gear-less to meet the others and check reservations. Standard shit show. One woman was demanding passes for every ticket, the other was just giving them out left right and centre. I didn't have a pass so I joined the huge queue, majorly pissed off and pretty ratty. After 5 mins Ryan at the front got a reservation for me... awesome. Ran back home to get changed and ready. Also bought some new poles en route and made an awesome sandwich.

Busy arête is busy

Red our improvised plan, Green where we skied down 

Up the top Ryan and I split off from the others and waited for Dave, Emily and Mad Dog who were a few bins behind. Our aim was the Col du Tacul, a 900m vert tour skiers right of the Seracs du Geant. We headed off down Petits Envers finding fresh powder most of the way. In places it was too deep to move, others the tracks from yesterday were very visible although still great to ski over. Emily was nursing an injury so decided to split off and head home.

Ryan and the Seracs du Geant

I started the skin first as I knew I'd be struggling. I had my fat skis on, almost 3kg on each foot over Dynafit setups. Doesn't sound like much but my god... Ryan passed me after a while, Dave followed soon after (that man is a machine - put both of us to shame) and MD stayed behind fighting with his own fat skis. After about 350m vert the others stopped and waited. We decided to go for the alternate Col. MD was done. Said he'd wait for us for an hour or catch the next group who skied past. The three of us carried on up to around 610m vert where another group passed us. They said the other side was a 50m rappel. Our ropes weren't long enough, MD was still waiting and we didn't feel comfortable with him skiing down alone. We chose to ski down rather than doing anything stupid (lucky because I was knackered). Unfortunately MD had already started off on another route but got down fine.

Ryan and Dave above

Skinning from the seracs left of photo

Instead of retracing our steps along the glacier we chose the steep faces skiers' right. The first pitch was heavenly. Did a mini traverse to the steeper section. The snow was unbelievable. Could bounce turns so easily. This is what makes it all worthwhile. All the exhaustion was gone and replaced by sheer joy. Another few pitches and we were down on the mer de glace. Awesome. It was even more fun because we were all comfortable enough to do long pitches and so it was less stop-start than usual.

Only tracks with Ryan on his way down

Our exit - tracks furthest left of the right exit

Happy days!