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...