Alpine Break

I headed up to Font Sancte with John Mallery today to have a go at the central couloir on Font Sancte. The weather forecast was good and the weather seemed to be spot on both at Guillestre and at the car park up at Ceillac.

From the top of the lifts, looking over at the peak there was a cloud sat above it and some evidence of localised snow fall, we pushed on nevertheless hoping it would get blown away or burnt off as the sun heated things up.

As we headed towards the couloir we could see clear patches over the ridge above the couloir and it keept looking promising and spurring us on.

The couloir looked great. The guidebook has it down as a 5.2 grade and roughly 50 degrees at the start followed by 45 for about 350m – and that looked about right. We got to the foot of the couloir and started boot packing up it, but it wasnt to be. The localised snow fall, coupled with the fact that all the snow shed off the steeper slope above had collected here at the base of the couloir meant that I was wallowing up to my elbows in powder, trying to swim up a 45 degree slope with a few kilos of kit on my back. And John was calling from behind that it wasnt any easier in the track that I had left. So we had to call it a day and head off back down.

There is a fantistic pitch, about 1km long from the bottom of the couloir at about 35 degrees all the way back down to Lac St Anne, which we took full advantage of.

Here is a map of the route

download it to view in Google Earth

Filed under: Photo on January 8th, 2009