Enjoying what little we could see of the powder in Courmayeur

Sun 17th: Courmayeur - 20cm fresh, more higher

Oscar's friends had reported decent powder in Courmayeur on Saturday and a snowfall on the way. Chamonix had absolutely nothing so Oscar, Rasmus, Jack and I headed over.

We arrived to 20cm of fresh from the night, so yesterdays tracks were showing. There was still enough fresh to charge through without effort. A quick lap of Zerotta and we headed up Bertolini for a few laps, somehow managing to lose Oscar. The snow was pretty good in the trees, but we figured it'd be much better higher and Youla was open. 

Youla had a biiiiiiig queue by Courmayeur standard (then again it is half term...) We reached the top to low visibility. Everyone was smashing the back bowl but we figured we'd check out the couloir as we'd actually like to be able to see. There had already been 3-4 people in front of us. The snow was great and we barely crossed a track. As the couloir opened into the bowl we found sections of the previous snowfall that had sluffed leaving only a thin layer of fresh on top. In the flat light it was hard to tell what was what but you soon learnt where to go.

One of many traverses out in the better visibility

We went back up for a second lap and the visibility poked out so we dropped off the back. Great snow. Occasionally you could feel the base but it didn't make much difference. Still face shots. We continued on for the rest of the day lapping various orientations of the Youla (8+ laps by the end). Some had visibility, some didn't. Some were better than others, but all were good. Later on we eventually managed to find Oscar, although we lost Jack to fatigue by the end. We avoided certain aspects after I cut a couloir and it sluffed back to the crappy previous layer. Clearly the new snowfall hadn't bonded at all in places.

Rasmus in the white room

We skied until the very final lifts and intended to ski down but Oscar skied straight past the turnoff (or what I assume was, it's hardly made clear). As I wasn't sure we played it safe and took the very last chair up and took the bubble down. We'd got on the lift a full 8.5 hours before and hadn't had a break. By far the longest ski day I've done but a really good one.