McNab Snowbaording Day 3

5th Feb 2008- Day 3 - Punta Helbronner

The morning dawned a lot brighter than predicted. Ross had collected my board from the shop duly patched up and we donned harnesses and headed over to Courmayeur again- this time to take the 3 cable cars up to Punta Helbronner.

At the top we did a transceiver check then descended some metal stairs and descended on a traverse to the right but to skiers left of that slope. We had to hike for a bit before putting our boards on to get down a narrow sketchy icy traverse to a 2nd set of stairs seemingly in the middle of nowhere! At the bottom on a sketchy ledge we strapped our boards on and traverse to the right of the slope which had just a few ski tracks on virgin snow!

As we dropped down I picked up good speed and had some flowy turns in the sweet powder- wow! Grinning. Further down I took a tumble and was told to “Point your focking board down the hill!” by Ralph.

We had to keep a straight line speedy traverse back to the mid station having dropped 1400m already! From there we headed back up to do it all again but this time at the bottom of the 2nd stairs we headed left and got real virgin tracks again. At one point Ralph headed over a rollover and set off a mini avalanche- the boys told me to go next so I followed him and hit his debris helicoptered over and set off a slab avalanche myself. Recovered from that I got some sweet turns in and then traversed all the way back to the mid-station, where we sat on a sunny deck for lunch.

Discussions over lunch over whether someone i.e. Jim or I would go down the lift and drive the van back but Ross told me I could not drop out and although I was a bit tired I did not want to miss out. So we headed back up and this time dropped immediately right from the first steps into Vallee blanche. The first few tracks were virgin snow and sooo sssweet! We were all grinning and whooping!

After a while we had to traverse a lot in deep snow and that was keep your speed time. At one point Alan and I ran over a hole leading to a crevasse- aghh! We made it though.

Ralph spotted some skiers in trouble over a serac so he went over to help lower them down an icy slope and we had to wait a long time in the cold with the sun going down. It was easy to see how quickly pleasure can turn to pain or rather danger.

Eventually it was my turn to tie on to the abseil and get lowered down on my hands and knees on an sheer ice drop. Then we had to wait for more skiers to be lowered and finally Ralph arrived and told us we had to go fast and safe to not miss the Montenvers train or we would have to ride to the bottom!

Well that made me nervous as the crevasses below looked gaping and I did not want to feel rushed and make mistakes. So I took it slow and passed Euan in a hole below a serac- narrowly missing a crevasse dive! I left Alan to pick him up.

After a long long speedy traverse across the falt and icy terrain of the Mer de Glace we got to the Montenvers stairs where we had to sprint up what seemed like endless steps- thighs burning. I got to the train station at 4:25 with the last train at 4:30- the relief running thru my body was immense.

At the bottom we went in high spirits to Chambre Neuf and a few beers later were very very merry indeed. Meanwhile Ralph hitched back to Courmayeur and picked up the van, then picked up us and we headed home. Knackered and late again but giggly and happy!

Epic day!