Couloir

Yesterday took ourselves on a Swiss tour.  My personal view is that we've now had the last good snow of the season and so the time was ripe to take in all the lower lying runs while they are still fresh.

As usual the day started with me saying that i wanted an "easy ski".  Somehow this never happens.  Our first run of the day was an alternate route down the Snowcross Brocheaux.  Phil will be happy to know that it was a lot better this time around given the new snowfall, but it was extremely heavy and the narrow gully we came down was tricky to navigate.

After that we ascended the Mossette chairlift with a view to skiing down Sim's Gully.  This was the view from the top of Sim's Gully with the Dents du Midi off to the left in the background.  Please now take a moment to appreciate this photo.  It took me a very very long time to take it because once i'd got the camera out and Natalie was in position a man and his daughter arrived and stood pondering the drop for a good ten minutes, thoroughly ruining my shot.

Once they'd realised that, in fact, they really did not want to ski down this dark black slope, de-skied, and walked back to safety, another seventy million muggles arrived and approximately 70 percent of them made the same decision as the first two.

Eventually i got a clear shot and the above photo, i think you'll agree, was worth the (exasperating) wait.  It was actually quite amusing to see groups of people ski to the edge of the run, look at it for quite a while, and then turn around and head back away from it as inconspicuously as possible.  Sim's Gully is not for the faint of heart.  This shot, below, i took from the run that leads onto Sim's gully.  i've lined the horizon up with the base of the camera again to try to convey the steepness.  Just over the fake horizon is rather a large cliff.  Lucky we didn't trying skiing around it.

Having said all this, we didn't actually end up skiing Sim's Gully, instead we skied, by far, the steepest slope of our ski careers.  No seriously.  We both has vertigo on it and it makes the Swiss Wall look like an M25 access ramp.  We traversed across the top of Sim's Gully, across the next couloir, and then into the 3rd Couloir, which i've named the Davies Couloir.  Why?  Because i can.  This is it:

Note that i, from only about 5m below Natalie, you can clearly see the underside of both of her skis.  Couloir comes from the French for "corridor" and, as you can see, it's a bowl-shaped narrow fissure formed between two steep ice-cliffs.  Besides the steepness, which i'd say is at least 10 to 20 degrees steeper than the Swiss Wall or even Sim's Gully itself, it's also very narrow - only about 5m of turning space.  Couple this with extremely sticky, heavy, choppy snow and it was a pretty hair-raising experience.  Well, it would have been if my hair wasn't plastered to my head with sweat on the inside of my helmet.

It didn't help that, once we were committed to the route, we noticed the ominous Cross at the top and saw that this couloir, the Davies Couloir,  had been roped off to prevent people skiing it.

This is Natalie once we were out of the couloir.  The Davies Couloir is directly above and slightly to the left of Natalie's helmet just under the left shoulder of Pointe de Mossette (the peak in the background).  You really don't get a sense of the steepness or narrowness of these couloirs from this photo, but take it from me, it was steep and tight.  Sim's Gully is the one directly to the left and below the chairlift on the right of the photo.  Sim's Gully is actually an unpisted black run.  The couloir to the left of the Davies Couloir is a Swiss yellow run, with the same difficultly rating as the Wall.

Anyway, i'm quite sure you're bored of hearing about this run by now, so here's some other news.  It's not my country but i feel empowered to name the terrain as i see fit.  As promised,  Siobhan, i've picked out two peaks to be named after The Phils.  May i present The Phils - the two rightmost peaks in the Dents du Midi as seen from the French side.  i hope they approve.

A kind Frenchman, who must have been some cool Boarder being filmed took this fabulous photo of us in Switzerland.  This could well be my favourite photo of all time.

This was only the second run of the day!  We completed the route off-piste down to Les Crosets where we found a superb gully on the way down.  Phillie would love this part of the run.  It was so good,  i took this video of it:

After this we skied down to Morgins and then headed back over Super Chatel.  i think i've bored you enough so far with this post so: To Be Continued.