Tecnica Cochise Boot review for Storm Day Sales Group-

Crampons… check. Harness… check. Beacon…check.  Boots…hmm.  Boots…COCHISE! In February 2011, as I was prepping my gear for a six week trip to Chamonix, France I realized that my kit was not up to snuff without the Tecnica Cochise boot.  Its 120 Flex, with ultra light, but stiff Triax material plastic. Its 100mm in the forefoot. I have spent the majority of my skiing life looking for aesthetic ski lines and slowly acquiring the necessary gear to get the job done in the most demanding situations. Every season I have tried another lame AT boot out, looking for alpine performance, Dynafit compatibility, and a good walk mode.  When I first tried on the new Tecnica Cochise boot, I knew that I had found the holy grail of freeride boots.  With a high stiff cuff, durable buckles, a oversized velcro powerstrap/buckle, an amazing tour mode and replaceable dynafit compatible heel and toe blocks, this boot is designed to get you where you want to go and allow you to pin it on the way down.
Stepping into these boots every morning on the other side of the world at the base of the Aguille du Midi , I knew that the last thing I would have to worry about in the high alpine peaks of the French alps was how my boots were going to perform.  I skied them on some of the hairiest, steepest and iciest terrain I have ever skied in my life, as well as waist deep pow with a heavy pack on. The boots performed better than any other boot on the market.  The walk mode is simply perfect.  Easy to engage and disengage and really allows you to lengthen your stride while skinning and articulate your feet in sketchy hiking terrain to get solid placements.

I skied these boots in and out of bounds for 45 days straight without a glitch.  Not one broken or bent buckle, superb fit the whole time, and durable hardware.  After returning to the states, the boots proved again that they could handle inbounds terrain at the rowdiest resorts, and still switch back to an efficient and comfortable touring boot once you duck the ropes.

 

For a better look at how my European trip went this year please check out kristhaoe.blogspot.com or click on these links to see some video from the trip!

shoulder season stoke!!!

Summer has been awesome....riding a lot, and waiting semi=patiently for snow....got a little love from mother nature today. Perfect riding conditons, and a great mellow first day of ski season!!! gotta love tahoe!

April fools on Cosmiques.

Rylan and I decided that we needed to take the tahoe boys down cosmiques today, as a bit of snow fell last night and they leave town soon. With mixed reports of the quality of the snow in there, we decided to give it a shot. The crew was stoked to check out one of the most famous lines here, especially if you are American. Rappel? awesome. im extreme!

Here are Eric and Jason checking the goods...

Rylan playing follow the leader and rapping in first to check it out. With a "how do you feel about your edges boys?" i began to realize how the day was shaping up here.

By the way, this is the coolest photo I have taken in a while!

Eric felt stoked on skiing his 118 underfoot skis on ice, so he was next. nice job kiddo.

Jason pumped to be on a rope, and getting after it in France!

The entrance was icy, almost too icy to stick to in places. This required the judicious use of controlled sliding again (which Rylan and I practiced on glacier rond last week) or a very slow and methodical approach. After a bit of an ego check, both ended up working out.

After the icy bits at the top, the middle half of the run was great snow until the avie debris where the exit coulioir meets with cosmiques, then more chunder. The boys were psyched to tick a classic chamonix line, and I was stoked to ski a bit of pow and bring everyone home safely.

Pow for me!

Col du Floria

Headed out today to check out what fell yesterday during our rainy day adventure on the glacier, and I have been wanting to ski this line since my second day in chamonix, its called Col du Floria, and it sits just outside the Flegere boundary line, you acccess it via a short skin and bootpack that probably takes about an hour to get to the top of the line from the index lift. Clive hadnt skied this line either so he was stoked to go bag a new one...even if it is mellow. we skied the gully under the big yellow arrow. This is a photo from the back side of Col du Crouches.

Here are the boys skinning on up there....

Rylan getting into the good work on the bootpack. This snow was a bit saturated and wierd, but we only spent a few minutes in it thankfully.

Clive fighting the good fight!

A look back down the bootpack at Flegere and Chamonix, with the Argentiere Glacier and Grand Montets across the valley

The ski down was fun, heavy pow on a good base layer, the chute we skied had some really wierd angles in it, so it was hard to ski fluidly...I heard a rumor that straightlining this run is a classic badass thing to do in cham, so maybe when we get some visibility Rylan will go back and pin this thing... The lower bit of the run down to the basin was great. Smooth pow over a nice smooth surface, made for fast skiing!

We skinned for about another hour or so to regain the Col du Berard, and took the train home from Le Buet. Clive is the man and carried a 1.5 liter bottle full of beer for the train ride. Forget tea, beer is civilized. For the mean time we can look at Clive's awesome headband tan, and giggle.

Rain in the valley, Flying ice on the Mer de Glace

It was raining pretty hard in the valley today and we didnt have much motivation to get on the bus to go ski in zero visibility, so we procrastinated for a while and decided to go play with ice tools on the bottom of the mer du glace. I have never been ice climbing, and while this probably doesnt quite get me my merit badge, i did get to spend some time on the front points of my crampons. Fun day.

Rylan scoping out the best ice crag on the glacier....and maybe picking his nose?

We built a short toprope on a curved ice block near the end of the glacier, and spent about an hour playing around. fun stuff. the guys that climb really steep ice must be animals. cause it is hard.

Here is Jason protecting himself with a two-ice screw anchor, just in case the 4 feet of exposure made him black out again. just kidding jason.

So we skipped the rainy day in Chamonix for some rainy roped ice bouldering, and had waffles in town to follow it up. not a bad day....

Glacier Rond- Skiing on black ice.

We have been eyeing this line since Clive invited us to ski Cunningham / Passerelle Couloir last week, and the forecast called for 30cm of snow at the Midi, so we figured we would give the famous Glacier Rond a go. We were pretty stoked to drop into West Couloir if conditions looked like it would be good, so the plan was Glacier Rond with a West Couloir exit. Arriving at the Midi around 745 put us comfortably in the first bin up, even though the first bin which was scheduled at 810am, ended up leaving at 900am, we were on it. The line at the Midi this morning was so similar to an early KT morning, people jocking for position and trying to keep calm and quiet about their plans, so no one will poach their line. We had close to 30 people put their skis over the railing in front of ours waaay after we showed up, but the bin holds 65 so as long as you dont get squeaked out by the poachers, it seems ok. Even if you would get shot for shit like this in Squaw. Once everyone gets ready to get on the upper cable car, no one wants to be first in, because first in equals last out at the top. This guy found his corner in the tram and no one else wanted to be that far from the door, so he took a quick nap before his pow run!

Off the bin, haul ass down the arete, no skis on pack, just GO! Then a tedious waiting game of who is going to drop first and head towards cosmiques hut, first guy in just gets passed as the traverse get beat in, so there is a bit of strategy involved. We knew one other group was headed to Cosmiques Couloir, but didnt think we would have any competetion for the rond. Turns out we broke trail with American Dave Rosenbarger, and when his group split towards cosmiques we bid our goodbyes and headed right to the rond. no tracks, stoked, but nervous about the looming black ice. I had never skied on glacier ice under pow before, and doing it on steep terrain above all this cool terrain was a bit nerve wracking....Here is clive getting ready for the turns above the ice.

We managed down the icy bits, just doing my best to stay on my feet for the semi-controlled slide, and decided that the snow was not sticking well enough to try West Couloir. We broke left at the intersection to be greeted by more dense black ice above small crevasses. Happy to be through that mini crux, here is rylan getting his double angle of clive's entrance in the exit couloir.

Loud snow under pow, but managable, Clive getting it done on the entrance to the exit.

The snow on the exit couloir was pretty good for me, but it sounds like i found the best spots to hit, and avoided most of the frozen debris that was buried by the light light snow, Rylan and Clive did not have the same reports as me. Here is a shot looking up the exit couloir at the top station of the midi. AWESOME!

We ended up running into Alex and Jen who were in the Cosmiques as we were making sure that we didnt go into any holes above the exit couloir, and we fouind them naviagting the holy moly zone on the way out. We decided that the snow was too good to go home, and spun a quick one from the mid station to the Gros Rognon variation of Vallee Blanche, and it was banger!!!

Beautiful weather, fresh snow, cool lines and great friends. How am I going to leave this place?

Le Tour to CH with Tahoe boys....

Rylan and I skied a bunch of laps this morning at Le Tour, and made plans to meet Eric, Jason, and Dave to take them to the Pointe du Van to ski into Switzerland. Jason and Eric stayed out until 4am last night, while Dave did the responsible thing and went to bed around 12. I gave the boys bad directions and told them to meet at Col du Balme, and meant Tete du Balme, so we headed out late on our tour. The late start meant we had to hurry to make sure we got the bus home, and that really hurt Jason's hungover gumless situation, but he endured the hike and resulting near blackout at the top of the col, and we were rewarded with creamy pow in the chute. Great skiing!

Jason getting his blackout hike on.

Jason skiing the chute....

Hiking through town to the bus stop.....fun times!

Here is a bit of GOPRO footage of the run down to Trient.

Supercrew unsupertour

Skied out of Flegere today with the supercrew of Myself, Rylan, Ciara, Dave, Eric, Jason, Ben, Krystal, Joey and Janey. With this many people what could go wrong? The rough plan was to skin up Col du Belevedere and ski/rappel down the back side and ski to Le Buet, get everyone on a rope so they can say they got extreme, and have a beer before thr train ride home. We definitely skinned up to Col du Belvedere, and definitely did not get extreme. Instead we had a rope that wouldnt get the weaker skiers of the group past the rocky and firm gnar on the backside. We pulled the plug and motored back to the Flegere tram which closed in 45 mins. If we didnt get the tram we would have been walking another 2 hours down. Instead everyone busted ass, and skied, hiked, bush skied, rock skied, bootpacked and generally got awesome to make the last tram. Tears were shed, marriages were saved, and we all drank tasty beer at Les Rhododendrons. disaster averted!

Helbronner with the Tahoe Puppies and Dave

The tahoe boys showed up last night, and I was able to track down Jason by seeing him at the Cafe when I was on the bus, so we jumped off and built a plan to go ski off the Midi today with Jason, Eric and Dave. These guys are in town for about 2 weeks, and I am really stoked to show them around a bit. Here is a photo of the crew kicking it on the Midi bridge that Rylan, Clive and I rapped off last week. They were pretty stoked to see this in real life....

Here is a photo of Eric Bryant, aka Boy Wonder trying to look not scared to impress Rylan and I. We are his senseis, he cant show us fear!

Here is Jason looking disturbed by all the people. chaos and exposure of heading down the Midi arete to the Vallee Blanche, its pretty darn exposed!

We took these boys on the same tour that I did last week with Alex, Rylan and Clive, mainly because it is so cool for us Americans so ski in two countries on one day....So here is another photo of heading down the metal staircases into Italy. This one is of Jason.

Jason and Eric are a photo shooting allstar team, here is Eric skying over Jason for his first Italian send. Nice one buddy!

After skiing down to the Helbronner cable car mid station, we made the standard awesome french lunch of baguette, cheese, and sausage from the saturday market, and hustled back to Montenvers down the Vallee Blanche to make sure we got the last train back to Cham. We made it by 12 minutes. whew.

Col du Passon -> Glacier du Tour -> Col du Midi du Grands -> Trient

Clive invited us to come along on a tour with his snowboard buddy Martin on a tour that he claims is his favorite single day tour in the Chamonix region. The tour starts in France at Grand Montets, and finishes in the little village of Trient in Switzerland. We didnt get much beta from Clive about the tour, except to bring a lot of water and crampons for the Col du Passon. Col du Passon is a classic tour off the Argentiere Glacier and climbing up and turning around seems to be a pretty routine tour for local skiers here, and it looks like it would be a great run, but we were headed to the other side of it today. We skied across the argentiere glacier and booted up the moraine just as the biggest single rockfall I have ever seen came off 100 feet from us and made a huge wave of snow on impact, and this was at about 9am. I cant imaging what this moraine would be like with 5 more hours of sun on it.... so we scuttled up the moraine and started skinning, happy to be out of the impact zone. Here is a photo of Alex flying up a hot sunny skin once again. I had no chance of catching him today, i didnt feel very strong.

As we skinned we talked with some guided groups we passed and realized that this has become a detour for some groups on the uber classic Haute Route from Chamonix to Zermatt, avoiding the rappel melee at the Col du Chardonnet.
After a hour and a half skin or so, we came to a nice steep little bootpack that would require crampons at the top, it was close to 50 degrees for a short bit, maybe 50 meters...but had good snow coverage albeit a little firm.

After a quick lunch of saucisson and baguette, while watching the tour groups come up the bootpack and collapse immediately or step on their guide's rope going in for a hug, we set off for a super short descent to the Glacier du Tour, and traversed across it headed towards Col du Midi du Grands. The skin up this col was brutal, consistently steep for about 45 mins and drenched in sun followed by another hour of mellower skinning in the same skin melting heat as below. The views were amazing, but I was drained by the heat. Here is a shot looking back at Clive and Martin as Rylan and Alex powered on ahead of me. Some of the tracks you se ein the background of this photo are from skiplanes giving tours of the glaciated areas around Chamonix, these guys just ran laps all day flying up the valley, landing and turning around to take people back to the valley. Pretty cool watching the little planes buzz over you and land on the other side of the valley.

As we neared the top of the col, we encountered the biggest wind formed moat at the top that I have ever seen, this thing was probably 150 feet tall with 30 feet of vert at the top. Way cool. Here is a photo of Martin traversing the top of it on his way to the top of the Col.

Now its time for the good stuff, a second lunch, and a huge descent into the little village of Trient via the Glacier des Grands. The col topped out at 3235m, and Trient sits at an elevation of 1279m...Making this a 2000 meter descent! thats almost 6000 feet for you americans out there. The top yielded awesome wind creamed pow, and the last couple hundred feet were nice corn into slush...Here is Rylan making it look good in the windbuffed pow!

We arrived in trient around 4:30pm about 45 mins late for the last bus to Vallorcine to catch the train back home, so we grabbed a coke and stuck out the thumbs. About 45 mins later all five of us had gotten rides back to Chamonix, with another great day of skiing in the big mountains under out belts!

Argentiere glacier - Les Cortes Scoping

I have been wanting to head up the Argentiere glacier and take a look at the iconic lines on Les Cortes since I arrived here. I convinced Rylan to head out with me and check it out today for a mellow excursion.

Here is a cool photo from the top of the Grand Montets looking into the far end of Argentiere glacier.

Here is a look back down the glacier as we skin up, with Rylan being swallowed by the expansive space.

We met a patroller on exchange from Snowbird named Dusty, who is staying the winter in the Grand Montets, and he wanted to cruise up the glacier with us, he was pretty fast!

Here is Dusty skinning up to the Argentiere Hut for a mellow lunch in the sun.

Stoked to be in these majestic mounatins!!!!

Here is the only line on the ridge that seems like it has potential to go in the near future. Its called Col de Cristeaux, located on the left side of this photo but the people ive talked with seem to think it still needs more snow, since its neighboring couloirs are all ice still. And the ice here is HARD!

After our 3 hour skin up the glacier we just glided back down to Grand Montet ski area and into the base in about 20 minutes. This place is awesome!

Helbronner with Rylan Clive and Alex....

Headed out to ski from Chamonix to Italy via the classic Helbronner Route with Rylan, Clive and Alex. We started by riding the Aiguille du Midi cable car and doing the start for Vallee Blanche, followed by a thirty minute-ish skin to the border of Italy and France.

Here is Alex skinning past my favorite mountain here, Tour Ronde....

A better close up of aforementioned favorite mountain...It needs a lot more sticky icky to make it go!

After the skin up, you ski over the ridge into Italy and walk down this massive set of metal stairs, you really get a taste of exposure on this....

After an exceptionally manky ski down to the Helbronner mid station, with a few bits of nice corn mixed in, we took a chance to eat lunch on the border of the two countries on the roof of the upper station.

Clive brought us in the loop on his favorite Italian cocktail the Calimero which has rum, eggnogish liquid, coffee, and whip cream, and they were pretty fantastic. After another ride in a smaller cable car, we arrive on the Mt Blanc Massif, and ski across a huge plateau to a pow run between some pretty big crevasses.

After the pow, we had to negotiate a pretty hairy crevassed section at the mer de glace intersection. We ended up strightlining a pretty tricky traverse with catcher cravasses below us, not a cool place to fall. But it all worked out alright, and we cruised down the Mer du Glace and ended up in town with beers in hand...