COSMIQUES!!!!!

We got a call from Clive this morning asking what we are up to for the day as we were walking out the door to jump on the bus for Grands Montets for some laps there. Last night i had hinted that i wanted to go ski Cosmiques Couloir ASAP, and apparently Clive got the hint. On the phone he told us how long the line was at Grand Montets, and asked if we wanted to head out to check out the Midi. It was go time! After a quick gear sawp to make sure we had all the neccesary items for skiing on the Midi, we ran downstairs and across the street to meet Clive. There were wuite a few people waiting, but Clive had pulled some bin numbers and we were set to go in about 20 mins.

Here is the view bootpacking up towards Cosmiques Couloir.

We just barely lost the sprint off the arete to a group of three guys that threw their ropes into the entrance of the couloir as we walked up to the couloir. We were fine to wait a bit for these guys to clear out, but in the process of waiting for them, four or five other group of people came up and left. Good timing for us!

Here is Rylan rappelling past the rocky sections up top, leading way to glorious pow fields below.

We ended up using 2 30m ropes to make sure we made it past the rocky bits, and it put us in a great place to organize and get ready to ski!

Fired up after the exciting entrance!

The Baud book calls Cosmiques Couloir 45-50degrees for 800m, and today that run was full of about a foot of nice light snow. It is a really amazing experience to ski such high quality snow on such a perfect sustained pitch in such a interesting position. Coming from Squaw 3 weeks ago and banging out KT laps to get in good ski shape makes me really appreciate how long the runs are here, and how happy I am to be here. No hour long KT lines for me with 3 min runs, im skiing down for an hour!!!!

Here is Rylan taking a break from the radness.....

The run took about an hour to get into and ski, and it was the best run of my life so far. Such a beautiful and great place to ski. Full on pow bathed in sun under the Aiguille du Midi!

Here is a look back up the run, you can see the small bergschrund peeking through the new snow, dont fall in!

The run out was interesting, littered with mini seracs and crevasses, and there was one spot with a fixed line to rap on to make sure you didnt slip and fall into a gaping hole!

Heres a shot of Rylan sideslipping the side of a glacier, and avoiding a potentially bottomless hole in the process....

A nice shot of Clive standing amongst the glacial chaos....

After we negotiated the glacier stuff, we had a 45ish minute sidestep ahead of us to get back to the mid station at the Aiguille du Midi,

Its pretty easy to tell by the length of this post how excited I am to have gotten the chance to get on this line, and I know that by Chamonix standards i might as well be skiing a groomer, but i had such a great time today! Big thanks to Clive for the tour, and I am so excited to get back up there and do some more exploring!