Better than the Last: Glacier du Mort

Thurs 6th: Got home on Weds to a text from Sunny asking if I wanted to do Glacier Mort early tomorrow. YES, yes I did. 8:45 at Flegere... cool. Woke up early feeling like death. Both my knees were aching from charging all the chopped up snow yesterday. Decided to at least get up and give it a go, could always turn back.

Waiting for Sunny in the MASSIVE Flegere lift queue left me even less enthusiastic. The others were already up so started the hike well ahead of us. Decided to bootpack instead of the faff of skinning. The bottom was pretty shit. I was following Sunny who was lighter and so I kept falling through the track. My socks / boots got soaked. A couple of skiers overtook me whilst I was stripping down half way up but I was around them and past another load of people on the bootpack. Got to the top and met the others; Jon, Julia, Mike, Steven, Maya and Matt.

After a quick turn around we were straight on to the traverse. Couldn't be bothered to gear back up. Big mistake. Dug a tip whilst not paying attention and frontflipped with only a t-shirt on. Cold... Got started on the second couloir up to the ridge. Again I was sinking in a lot until I started climbing the refrozen debris from the wet slide the day before. To my surprise I powered up without tiring and Sunny and I reached the top right after Matt. Few (naked) photos and general laughs then we headed up the final climb to pointe Alphonse Favre.

Slight nudity

Final scramble to the top

After group photos Sunny, Matt and I decided to break away. A group of eight is way too big to enjoy the decent properly and the others wanted to have lunch up the top. We dropped in, skiing the two steep sections at the top carefully. Then we went for it. One massive pitch took us almost to the bottom, all of us cheering the awesome snow. Another short pitch and we were down on the traverse. Sure the downhill was over soon, but man was it gooooood.