Passion of le Passon: A one-day basic and advanced course in ski-touring 13/13: The monkeys on top - Last photo of the day, as things started to go wrong. After 8 hours on the move we'd come up 1800m and were looking to have a relaxed few hundred meters down to the Refugio Albert 1er. But notice the backdrop of the photo? We'd used all the nice weather for going up, and now it was time to go down, to cross a crevassed glacier in close to zero visibility.
A the cloud thinned down a little, we put our bindings into downhill mode and started following the ski tracks down towards the refuge. The steep, deep and heavy snow wasn't too easy to ski but soft enough to fall comfortably... I a minut we saw some people coming up, and had a chat with the guide leading the group. He told us that it is quite straightforward to go to the refuge, and there we tracks turning down that we'd find after some minutes of skiing.
We followed their tracks but could not find the turn anytime soon. When we finally saw the tracks dividing, we took the downward pointing ski tracks, not really seeing where they were heading. We figured out it would be the refuge or down to the village.
Then we skied down nearly 1800 vertical meters in mostly visiblilty of 10-20 meters, trying to find the tracks left to us by people who we hoped knew the way. Mikko and me were falling a lot - much more than Ane liked us to - though the powder was almost perfect often, we were not accustomed and were weighed down by the rucksacks with food for three days.
We were looking nervously at the watch and the altimeter, speculating how far down we would be when it got dark. Luckily the slopes turned quickly quite gentle, and there was never enough snowfall to cover the tracks we followed. For the last few hundred meters, the clouds cleared and we could navigate the last bits of difficult terrain with visibility and just about made the last bus from La Tour to Argentiere (and straight to the pub to have a pint and some food).
This was probably the scariest day I've had in the mountains. The weather and difficulties in navigation took me far to the other side of my comfort zone. In retrospect though, it wasn't that bad: If we didn't have the tracks to follow down, we had a possibility of backtracking and making our way back to the Grand Montet pistes. Also, we were in terrain that wasn't very prone to avalanching, and crevasses we were avoiding almost completely. The psychological aspect being in unfamiliar territory in a whiteout and pressed for time (daylight hours) is quite stressful.
Anyway, in the eveining we had a nice meal together with our gracious hosts Eva and Jack, hit the bed quite early and int the morning took the first bus and the first telepherique to start from top, to do the hut approach in just a few hours.
Alppihiihtovaelluksen yhden päivän perus- ja jatkokurssi 12/13: uh. Lukekaa lontoonkieliset yttä
