TR: Chamonix 2012 Days 6-7: Bivouac d’Envers des Dorées – The Missing TR

Filed in: Chamonix 2012, Trip Reports | Tags: Aiguille du Midi, Blizzard of Aahh's, Chamonix, Les Grands Montets, Ski Touring

Just discovered this on my laptop. I wrote it in anticipation of getting the photos from Jerome, which I never did. I have a few but he has the lion’s share. He lost the cable to his camera, I didn’t have the right card reader, and after I left we never got around to getting

‘Snow Beacon’ Avalanche Transmitter – No Receive, No Point?

Filed in: Equipment, Featured, Gadgets / Tech | Tags: Avalanche Safety, Equipment, Ski Touring

Snow Beacon (Image (c) www.snow-beacon.com)

Today I saw a few links pop-up on Facebook for a product called ‘Snow Beacon’ which is an avalanche transmitter. Some clicking around the website shows that it is a transmitter only – no search mode – running on the internationally recognised 457KHz frequency. The tag line on the website of the product is ‘Affordable

TR: Chamonix 2012 Day 5 – SE Couloir of Tour Ronde to Brenva Glacier

Filed in: Chamonix 2012, Trip Reports | Tags: Aiguille du Midi, Chamonix, Courmayeur, Punta Helbronner, Ski Touring, Skiing, Steep

After yesterday’s successful mission on the Italian side skiing the Aiguille d’Entreves we concluded that if the weather remained the same our best chance of skiing some steeps was in a similar location, and now that Jerome had tested how I’d cope with some basic climbing we set our sights on a larger objective –

TR: Chamonix 2012 Day 4 – Steep Skiing – South Face of L’Aiguille d’Entreves

Filed in: Chamonix 2012, Trip Reports | Tags: Aiguille du Midi, Chamonix, Courmayeur, Freeride, Glacier De Toule, Punta Helbronner, Ski Touring, Skiing, Steep

After yesterday’s aborted mission on the Glacier Rond we figured if we wanted to ski a steep line a better option would be to head over to the Italian side which is the South Face of the massif, and basking in sunshine we were anticipating being presented with some lovely corn snow. So after heading

TR: Chamonix 2012 Day 2 – Glacier du Tour Noir

Filed in: Chamonix 2012, Trip Reports | Tags: Aiguille du Midi, Chamonix, Freeride, Les Grands Montets, Ski Touring, Skiing

After a great ski tour yesterday the day dawned sunny again so more touring seemed to be the logical conclusion. The Argentiere Basin is an area that I had not spent any time at all in (if you exclude skiing from the top of Grands Montets). Col du Passon is a Chamonix classic that I

TR: Chamonix 2012 Day 1 – Col du Belvedere

Filed in: Chamonix 2012, Trip Reports | Tags: Chamonix, Freeride, Les Grands Montets, Ski Touring, Skiing, Steep

After a very worthwhile week in Turkey (more details on sister blog aussieskier.com ) I came back to Chamonix to ski for myself. After landing in Geneva I jumped in a van to Chamonix and met up with Jerome to check in to the amazing apartment he found for me. I am very spoiled and

Photo Gallery – Buller – Queen’s Birthday 2011

Filed in: Mt Buller, Snow Reports | Tags: Buller, Report, Ski Touring, Skiing

In a rare move, I took my DSLR up to Buller on the weekend, and even more rare, I actually took it out and about! Here’s a few high quality pics from the weekend: (Click on the images for a larger version) We also made some stops on the way down the hill to take

Backcountry Adventures in HD

Filed in: Chamonix 2011, Trip Reports | Tags: Chamonix, Home, Ski Touring, Skiing

I finally got the chance to work on some of the videos from our trip to France – the anaemic netbook I took away was barely powerful enough to view the videos, let alone edit them, and our net connection wasn’t strong enough to upload in HD. So here’s some short videos of our BC

TR: Lake Mountain 15/5/11 – May Skiing

Filed in: Trip Reports | Tags: Home, Lake Mountain, Report, Ski Touring, Skiing

It had been 8 weeks since we had skied, and that was enough. My Autumn had been ruined with a back injury sustained picking up my ski bag at the airport on our return from Europe, usually this period of settled, cool weather is best spent on the golf course, but I had only ventured

TR: Days 20-21 – Road Trip – Monte Rosa

Filed in: Chamonix 2011, Trip Reports | Tags: Chamonix, Ski Touring

With the foehn still persisting in Chamonix we had another enforced day off after our adventure to Trient. Winds & Clouds meant that most interesting options were off the radar, and we didn’t really feel like yo-yo-ing on the pistes with the hordes. Word was filtering through that the Monte Rosa region of Italy had