Almost 40's Blog

Guides like to ski fast. And that's good. Silvan in Chamonix went fast for long stretches and so did our ski patrol guide today. We never got his name. He was moving too fast. After almost three weeks of non-stop snow, the vast, steep, snow-catching terrain in the Hanging Valley area was an avalanche control challenge. Patrol had been working on it. Indeed we heard many bomb blasts yesterday while we were packing Campground. Today when we crested the top of High Alpine, we saw groups of hikers headed up the hill toward Headwall, Hanging Valley Wall and the other goodies. I checked with a patroller standing near the top of the lift. He said they were doing guided only skiing today and we just needed to sign a waiver in the nearby ski patrol hut and we could be on our way. After a couple "hold harmlesses," "forever indemnifies" and such we were assigned a patroller and we headed up the hill for the opening of all this terrain for the first time this season.

Of course there were no stops on the hike. Why would anybody want to do that? Not me, it would just delay cashing in on the goods. He took us to the far reaches of Headwall, a true double diamond pitch that runs a couple hundred yards before tapering off. We jumped into that and floated through powder barely touched for the entire season. After we regrouped, we bounced through the woods, then down a ridge that had seen some tourists, but was still quite soft. Then we went over the edge and hit another free fall pitch with only a couple tracks and even more powder because we were now below tree line and this area obviously collected huge amounts of blown in snow. And just like that it was over. But the smiles lingered.

Otherwise, we cruised around, poaching some leftover powder on the edges of runs and finding a few tree stashes here and there. The sun actually came out. Apparently that was the first time in weeks. Oh well.

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