Friday 19 March 2010

Petite Verte


With a morning off from work and keen for some fitness and skiing, Peter and I headed up the Grand Montets and decided to climb the Chevalier Couloir on the Petite Aiguille Verte. The route is a classic ski descent and would be pretty good right now. The top section has been side slipped but you'd be best just climbing the bottom 3/4 of the route and skiing from there.

Despite the good skiing conditions we climbed all the way to the top and then skiied the NW face of the petite verte. This is a pretty steep pitch at around 50 - 55 degrees according to the book. The very steep section at the top is nice soft snow, but it turns to hard neve on the shallower bit, so it's a long slog for some nice steep turns, but there isn't much good snow right now so probably worth it for the real powder hounds.

Good half day if you need a quick hit - we were back at the car park for midday.