La Grave Mid Season Report
Submited By ptor On 2008-02-20
Looking at a half full cup or a half empty cup is always up to the individual. In La Grave, the polyvalent person tends to see the cup always containing something refreshing and satisfying regardless of the amount in the cup. La Grave is like that, it’s always crucial but you have to be able to see it. So we haven’t had snow in a couple weeks? If you only know how to ski powder, you’re screwed but if you can actually rail turns on hardpack, if you can explore the infinite couloirs, perfect corn snow and amazing backcountry routes in perfect stability, if you can speed-ride or paraglide in perfect calm winter conditions, if you can ice-climb in ideal temps and conditions, if you can rock climb in t-shirt and shorts a half hour away... then you’re always in paradise.



Personally, I choose to view myself as stuck in paradise, having missed my work in Kashmir due to a gnarly sciatica condition over the holidays and more recently, massive Visa/Passport fuck-ups. Sometimes the flow just sweeps you along with a force too strong to hold on. New years arrived while I was paralyzed in bed with a massive back spasm that began Christmas day. When I finally could move again on the 2nd , I was left with a partially functioning left foot and some efforts at rehablitiation.I didn’t miss much during the first week or so of my regained mobility and I religiously hooked myself up to the Compex machine everyday to jumpstart my nerves. Then it started dumping and I watched epic days of tree skiing pass by, still too weak to join in.



Finally Jan 13, I made it out on an epic day, one of those days where the meter deposited in the alpine was challenging to ski. It was humbling but a real treat to be up there again after having a hard time walking not too long before. I felt like a begginner again. My return was well timed because it just kept getting better. The next three weeks were sun with intermittent moderate dumps of cold snow to the valley. It doesn’t usually snow tons in La Grave, but that way you get nice stable conditions more often. I kept getting stonger and back closer to form.








In one amazing storm cycle, the day after one perfect little dump, massive winds shut everything down while giant plumes of snow hundreds of meters high rose from ridges and summits. Strangely enough, sometimes the wind actually brings stability here when it’s ultra strong (contrary to conventional wisdom). To everyones surprise after the next 50 cm, the stability was exceptional and all the crucial runs were running top to bottom in perfect powder. I definately had some of my best days ever in La Grave during this session and kept getting myself into new terrain I’d never experienced before.



And that’s the way it stayed into Febuary as we entered a massive mid-winter anti-cyclone (high pressure). Not an avalanche has been seen or triggered since anywhere (except for the post storm sloughs in the lower steep couloirs). The surface conditions have been variable and high north faces blown to grey ice, but exploration potential has been unlimited and the above average temperatures have created spring corn conditions on the south faces. It’s amazing how the wind crust gets eaten by cold nights and clear days on the north aspects as well.





In one recent foray, Mattieu Bonnetbleu my good friend, ski-partner and local sheppherd, and I went to expore a line we had been looking at for years. Finally, the Glacier du Casset on the Montagne des Agneaux had receeded enough and dumped off a few key seracs that allowed us to finally pass and make a premiere descent of the “integral” (meaning the uninterrupted main line). What an ambience skiing through the ice features! I would have to say that’s almost my favourite style of run, routefinding through exposed glaciers (when conditions permit).















The downfall of such great weather is the tourists coming over from the mega resort of Les Deux Alpes that get dropped off at the top of the La Grave territory by snowcat. All of a sudden they are ignorantly deposited above the giant runs with tracks going down everywhere. There were so many rescues of people thinking they were still in Deux Alpes and dropping blindly into galciated technical terrain without guide, ropes for the manditory rapells or any clue as to where they were going. Unfortunately there was even a couple of deaths that really sounded the alarm on this issue.



The weekend of the 15th through17th of Febuary was the annual Swallowmania festival of giant skiis and snowboards. It wasn’t exactly powder but it was the perfect conditions to expreience “real” skis that can both float nice and make a solid arc on hard snow. As such new skiis like the Black Diamonds, Black Crows and hand shaped Rabbit On The Roofs outshone the floppy crap that most large ski companies are putting out. La Grave remains the perfect testing and proving grounds for the all-round ski and the all-round skier. With the base still solid right down to the road, were still shaping up for one of the best March/April sessions ever!