Haute Route 2013 - Day 3

The days were starting to follow a pattern: heading out at first light while the temperatures were below freezing;  touring for as long as possible while the temperatures were pleasant; then slogging it out for the last couple hours in temperatures way too hot for skiing. We would get to the next hut around 2pm. This left a long afternoon for sun bathing, beer drinking and cheese eating while soaking up the phenomenal mountain scenery.

At "only" 2400m Chanrian Hut is actually quite low and is totally surrounded by towering peaks.  At first glance it seemed like a difficult place to ski out of.   But following the drainage below the hut lead to a narrow canyon.  This is exactly the type of land form that you would be a fool to enter in New Zealand but on the Haute Route things always seem to work out.  The narrow walls of the canyon corkscrewed along with ice walls looming overhead.

Suddenly the canyon opened out onto the toe of an enormous glacier.  The glacier was smooth and slowly rising and disappeared into the distance.  Baptist had a look of dismay when he muttered the mysterious word " Otemma".  As I was to soon learn this was the name of the glacier we were ascending.  To the other guides dismay it is the longest and flattest glacier of La Crete principal des Alpes (Principal Ridge of the Alps) and they find a drudge.  It was like someone had ironed the Tasman Glacier into a smooth carpet of snow, no moraine, no white ice.  Unlike my mates I found this to be one of the most pleasurable parts of the whole trip. The temperatures were cool, the snow was perfect and the terrain just melted away behind us as we made fast progress up the glacier.  I quiety thought that if these guys did a bash up the moraine to Gardner Hut the Otemma would look a lot different to them.  This was ski touring as it should always be.

Eventually we took our exit from the main trunk of the glacier and approached a high pass under a couple of beautiful peaks.  The highest peak was L'Eveque (The Bishop) and the pass that it hovers over had some of the best snow of the whole trip.

Dropping over the pass we entered Italy and could see Nacamuli Hut on the ridge below us.  This hut is one of several in the area and is used less that some others making it attractive for a large group such as ours. It was an unusual treat to ski down to the hut rather than climb up to it.

I learned that the Italians had a different view on waste disposal and the reason the toilet was located so far below the hut was evident as soon as I opened the door. I will spare you the photo.

 At dinner that night the place mats had a map of the huts in the Aosta Valley.  There are over 50 huts listed - this is just one valley!    The people of this area have an amazing relationship with the mountains (despite mediaeval toilets)

Haute Route 2013 - Day 2

Waking up at 5 am might not seem like like something to get excited about but this was going to be a big day.  Yeah sure there was a huge mountain to get over but more importantly this was the first time anyone was ever going to make me breakfast while I was working.  20 years of being the one to make the tea was all behind me now as I woke to bread, jam and hot drinks laid out for me.  Sure it was not the big Kiwi breakfast that I was used to but this was just fine, no dishes, no food to pack, not even a sleeping bag.  On top of it all it appeared that we were moving into the first period of fine weather they had forecast for ages, the day was beautiful.

We started out on our skis but after a half hour the going was too steep and we changed mode to carrying our skis and wearing crampons.  There are many ways of approaching the problem of getting a big group up a dangerous slope like this and I was keen to see how the Swiss guides would approach it.  We roped up into four groups and headed up.  Some times it is the simplest things that work the best.  By making sure that a few groups were ahead of us we were assured of good footsteps being plugged into the hard surface for us.  The other thing that they did was to go slow.  People tend to want to rush things and get sloppy with their foot work but by stopping with every foot step, people were forced into a steady snails pace.

It got steeper

And steeper.  Jean Vincent lowered a knotted rope over the final ridge cornice which was a grateful gripped by the tense clients.  

Finally we broke out into brilliant sunshine on the Plateau Du Couloir.  I have adjusted somewhat now but this was the first time reaching a notable milestone with a bunch of Swiss and I was somewhat taken back by the spontaneous outbreak of kissing that happened.  It is three kisses for each woman and a hearty hand shake for each man, not a small undertaking with a group as large as ours.  This was a pattern that was to continue for the trip, every time we reached a high point it was as if Switzerland had just been awarded the Winter Olympics.  

Once the hugging and kissing died down we stopped to admire the view.  Similar to NZ where you can look across glaciated peaks disappearing in to the distance, the view here was gorgeous.  The one difference I noted was that instead of the mountains dropping precipitously down to low elevations between summits, here it was as if The Maker had filled things in a little better.  Passes slid gently down to glaciers and glaciers tapered off slowly with easy slopes rising to the next pass.  Bouncing around between 2500m and 3600m it was if there was a very high passage all the way to Zermatt, if only they could come up with a name for it!  We could clearly see the Matterhorn in the distance, our destination in three days time.  It was every bit as impressive as the peak in Disney World it was named after.

Finally, after climbing 2000m from the start of the trip it was time to get some downhill skiing in.  The snow was pretty hard with the thaw that would provide great spring skiing still about 2 hours away but I could not have cared less. I was in a wild new world and I was loving it.

The route passed over the Col du Sonadon (the narrow col on the right) and continued down the Mont Durand Glacier, a ski run of over 1500m

We stopped for lunch........

Reaching Chandrion Hut, tired but happy.

Haute Route 2013 - Day 1

The Grand Combin (4134m) is the highest peak between Mont Blanc and The Matterhorn.  As I was soon to learn, the first obstacle was to some how get to the other side of this massive lump of rock and ice.

The track started easy enough with a side road leading out of the village of Bourg St. Pierre.  The day was heating up and I was hoping for an easy day to let my first day ski legs come to some sort of agreement with my jet lagged, altitude addled brain.

The group spread out as each person settled into their pace.  I tried to strike up a conversation with folks in the group but after my jaunty "bonjour!", I had little to back up my conversation skills.  Group members would happy talk to me until they came to the conclusion that I was either deaf or mute.

My heart sank about an hour in when the valley opened up and I got my first look at the big picture.  Like a massive 1/4 pipe, the valley curved up into a 1400m wall with the classic Valsorey Hut on top.  I realized that I had the equivalent of a valley floor to the top of the Treble Cone Six Seater climb ahead.

I held my own with the pace and reached the Hut just behind Baptiste.  I say held my own but what I really mean is that my dizzy spells were suppressed enough let me crawl to the hut.  After a 20min rest I gained some measure of dignity by skiing down and carrying up the pack of one of the stragglers.

Valsorey Hut (3037m)is a pretty standard hut for these parts, which is to say it is a picture perfect, chocolate box stone alpine hut.   I collapsed into a seat in the sun, this was the moment I came for, after 20 years of fending for myself in NZ alpine huts I was about to be waited on.  I steadied my hand as I reached for my first beer.

Aspiring Guides Stefan Sporli, now living in Chamonix was on the same itinerary and we had a great afternoon marvelling at both the luxuries and the challenges ahead.

We studied the route for the following day.  Over our heads the Grand Combin waited.  Wet snow avalanches swept down the face we were to climb in the morning after a good freeze.  The saddle in the centre of the photo below is the Plateau du Couloir (3645m) and our route for the next day.  The first photo of the blog gives a little different perspective than the wide angle one below. The hard snow that would stabilise the avalanche conditions would also mean the route was a one way trip back in a bag if one was to slip off.  Welcome to Haute Route ski guiding, 17 clients and over 500m of front pointing in the dark coming up.

Haute Route 2013 - What could go wrong?

This is Jean Maurice Founier, from the small alpine ski town of Nandez Switzerland, on the left.  He is a 70 year old ski guide and as far as guiding in the Alps goes he has pretty much been there and done that.  For the past 30 years Maurice has done a week long long ski trip with a group of friends from his village. The group size varies but this year there were 17 (four of whom have been on all 30 trips with him) plus three other guides, Jean Vincent Lang, Baptiste Founier, and one lucky Kiwi, Whitney Thurlow.  For the 30 year anniversary they were doing the same route they had done on the original trip, a route that most groups avoid since it is harder than the other variants, particularly the day two climb over the Plateau du Couloir.  More to come on that.

I met the group at the trail head 20 hours after arriving from New Zealand....without my baggage which had gone on a London holiday.  In borrowed boots, on borrowed skis, wearing borrowed underwear, I quickly realized that these guys really knew what they were doing (surprise surprise) and that I needed to get my act together fast. Seriously, these guys were the All Blacks of ski touring, I was the new assistant coach from Romania and the World Cup Game One was just starting. As I stood in the parking lot trying to figure out how my unfamiliar ski bindings worked, I began to fear that the Swiss translation for  New Zealand Ski Guide was going to be "Dickhead".   To Be Continued

Proof of Moa in East Matukituki !

Running Wild Walks I have spent a lot of time in the East Matukituki for the last 15 years and I like to think that I have a pretty good handle on the animals that live there.  But this one has me stumped.  We found this half of an egg shell in the sand at Ruth Flat.  The discolorization is just sand stuck to the shell  which is an even color.  But as you can see it is BIG.  Easily the size of four chicken eggs.  What kind of bird can squeeze one of these out!  If there are any Ornithologists out there let me know.  Do I

need to start carrying a weapon to protect myself?

Aspiring Guides DOC Conservation Project

Volunteer Stoat Trapping Project for Upper Wilkin

As many of you know, the Aspiring Guides' Wild Walks trekking program spends a lot of its time in the isolated Upper Wilkin region of the Mt Aspiring National Park.   We have been concerned for some time that this area has not been previously trapped for stoats, making life for the native birdlife pretty tough.   Working together with our local Wanaka office of the Department of Conservation we have been able to put in a line of 20 stoat traps just before Christmas 2012.   

It's been an interesting project and we've been getting pretty solid results - lots of squashed stoats!!   Here's hoping that we even out the playing field for the endangered alpine bird life in the Upper Wilkin. 

It's a volunteer project and we have been kindly supported by Wilkin River Jets and Backcountry Helicopters who helped us to heli-lift in the trap lines and with jetboat access.  We've also been thrilled with the volunteers who have been assisting our guides with checking and clearing the traps.   Our latest volunteers, Em & Alison from Wanaka were surprised at how much fun they had!  Check out their photos.

All dressed up with a stoat's favourite food - egg!

Got one!!

This puts the O in OMG !

The true size of the Mnt. Dixon rock avalanche on the Plateau Glacier can really be appreciated from the photo taken by a group from the summit of Mnt. Lendenfeld last week.  Plateau hut is in the centre of the bottom photo to give you an idea of the scale.