Cosmiques + Petit Envers

Mon 5th: Cosmiques - very icy entrance, good below / Petit Envers - sun crust  

Our detour from the day before. Short but took forever

Headed up with Oskar with the thought that there would still be leftover snow in the Cosmiques. The wind had affected the plateau above, but not the couloir at all. We carefully entered on the right and set up a 30m rappel. At the same time three people started side slipping down the other entrance. We packed up and decided to wait for them to pass not wanting to be taken out from above. One of the people looked borderline close to losing it the whole way. A fourth started entering but way behind. Oskar side stepped down and called up that it was very icy. I've never seen him sidestep so was a bit nervous and got my axe out as there was a narrow section my skis wouldn't negotiate well. Stepped down slowly, using my axe for the icy bulge. By this point the fourth guy had crossed over to directly above me. He lost his edges and starting sliding down, stopping only with the help of my planted axe... Not impressed. Told him not to *$%*ing move and continued down. The snow was much better on the sheltered left, fine to turn. The guy who had almost taken me out joined the guy who looked like he was about to go at any time... figures.

We carried on down fast, finding grippy snow up high and crusty powder below. The exit couloir had the best snow - even a few powder turns. Fast exit jumping the open crevasse and a quick traverse and we were back at mid station early. I had already been lagging behind and was pretty tired. Told Oskar I wasn't up for another especially with the entrance like that. Decided to head back up and do the first Grand Envers of the season.

Oskar's POV shot

Oskar dropped in first and went straight past the traverse to Grand Envers. Oh well, the wind was howling anyway so we split off and did a nice Petit Envers. The snow was sun crusted but good fun bouncing down the cut up snow. A few nice drops in the Requin exit bowl and we were down. Good day and we were finished early too! Perfect.

Enjoying the features on the Requin exit