Agreed with Jon to head up the Midi for the first time since our adventure a month ago. He still hadn't broken his white cherry and was getting desperate... Anyway... I had an early work run but a quick turnaround got me to the Midi for 9:20 to meet Jon, Sam and Ariane. We had booked three different bins just in case, but there was no need as we just walked on... Crazy how quiet it was, still a lot of people avoiding it clearly.
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| Sam looking all angelic |
The plan was for either Petit Envers / Gros Rognon, depending on where most traffic was going, preferably the latter. We arrived at the top to find a blank slate with a handful of tracks in Petit / Rognon from the previous bins. The storm that had hit Courmayeur had reached most of the way across the valley. Awesome.
I dropped in high to chalky snow and the others followed from further down. We kept the pace high despite Sam + Jon being on boards as I had work at 14:00 and to ensure some decent fresh lines. On reaching Rognon there were only a handful of tracks. Perfect. The guides had been taking people down far skier's right where it is much flatter but we opted to go skier's left. We skied down in fantastic, slightly wind affected, powder. Totally unexpected and wicked fun. We continued in long pitches, dodging the rollovers and seracs until the traverse out. By the top of seracs du geant the fresh snow had disappeared and we were left with good, firm, chalky snow.
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| Gave up waiting for the skier to move |
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| Taken by Jon |
We traversed to the Requin hut, had a quick break whilst we took in the scenery and then headed off. The lower traverse ended in a 2-3m step. In glacier mode I didn't even think about jumping it (which would've been far easier) so I did some weird downclimb. Sam followed and jumped it making me feel like a right...
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| Poor boarders |
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| Why didn't I just jump... |
We traversed round to the Requin exit bowl. More chalky goodness. Great fun. Ariane and I had work so we split off to to do the James Bond track whilst Sam and Jon took the train down. A quick ski down to the glacier, a fast pace on the boot-pack and a easy exit down the James Bond and we were home with plenty of time to spare. Perfect way to spend a few hours between shifts.
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