SnowSlider – Blogging From the mountains by ise

This was a slightly optimistic route plan, I’d wanted to go and look at a small valley just under the Grand Muveran. I’d planned to walk up the vallon de Nant then cross the col under the Pointe des Savolaires. In the event snow forced me to turn around just short of 2000m, the amount of snow on the ground was becoming a problem and I’d no way of knowing how much snow I’d experience on the other side of the col so I was aware that each metre I was moving up through the snow was a metre I was likely to have to descend. The weather also altered and it started to snow heavily so it wasn’t too pleasant.

Probably though the largest objective risk of the day was my lunch stop, there’s a small wooden building at around 1800m which was open at the front something like a terrace. That seemed a good sheltered place for lunch but as I sat there I started to hear the wood creaking alarmingly and realized the open front was due to the fact the front wall had fallen out. In fact it looked the building had started to fall down so I went to sit somewhere else in case it finished falling down while I was sat there.

It’s a nice valley, classic glacial formations and some high pasture although it’ll be some time before they move cattle up here.

Some signs of the avalanche debris from the winter, there’s some curiously deceptive slopes above here, at a quick glance you’d not see the steepness of the slopes but as I’d already looked at the map I was aware of the angles of the slopes.

As for the plant, ironically it’s a butterbur, not quite the same as the white butterbur on SwissMountainLeader but a butterbur anyway. Why’s that ironic? Because livestrong.com have stolen that butterbur image for their site and refused to remove it when asked, rather than remove the image they’ve suggested I remove my sites from Google so they can’t find them when searching for other peoples images to reuse or that I read their terms and write to them with a load of documentation after which they’ll investigate. Apparently their unauthorized reuse of my image implies I’ve accepted their terms and conditions in their bizarre view of the world. It’s appalling behavior I think and their attitude is odious, they’ve acknowledged it’s my image but they’ve made clear they’ve no intention of removing it unless they’re forced to by legal means. Personally I think instead of paying retainers for lawyers and copyright agents they should not use other peoples work without permission and when they’re caught doing it they should behave with some integrity instead of defining their conduct by what they can get away with or be forced to do.

A great photo of the path, just after getting through the avalanche debris at around 1700m.

I’ve wanted to go up the Dent de Lys for ages but never found the time before. It’s a small peak of 2014m in height in the Bernese Alps just above the ski station of Les Paccots which makes a good place to start an ascent from.

I really couldn’t weigh up conditions from home though, you can’t see the Dent de Lys from here, or from anywhere I’ve been in the last few days, so I couldn’t work out how much snow there was. I can see the nearby peak of Moléson which still seems to have snow at the same height as the Dent de Lys. Even from the car park in Les Paccots you’re tucked down in a fold of hills and I still couldn’t see the peak. So, as I left the car my conservative assessment was there was still ice and snow on the summit ridge so I took ice axe and crampons as a precaution and partly just to add some weight to the rucksack to get a good workout, along with a couple of cameras, lenses and assorted gear I was unlikely to really need.

As I paused for a couple of photo’s (above) just at the top of the ski area I still couldn’t really work the snow conditions out, there’s still a lot lying on some slopes but it’s been really warm and sunny so it’s clearing fast, obviously as the Dent de Lys has a steep approach slope I’m worried about the risk of avalanches and I think if there’s any amount of snow I’m going to have to change my plans a bit. According to the local guidebook from CAS it’s a T4 route, that basically means it’s as hard as it gets without being vertical or in permanent snow and ice.

But so far, below the snow-line it’s nice spring weather and the trail is pleasant climbing up through alpine meadows. The meadows are deserted right now though, the cows haven’t been moved up to their higher grazing yet so the fields and alpages (farms like the one in the above photo) are empty.

Some classic scenery if this area, there’s a familiar shape to the peaks and valleys around here, partly it’s familiar because there’s not many I’ve not climbed or skied on but also because the geology has left some repeating shapes in the landscape.

It’s here (above right or just above) I get the first decent view of the Dent de Lys. Basically there’s not a lot of snow there, it’s amazing really in late April that the weather is so good and that there’s so little snow at 2000m. I would have imagined I’d have been the first to make the summer ascent but crossing a snowfield I see some other footprints and later see a pair moving on the ridge line above me.

It looks like there’s a good safe line up to the col de Lys avoiding the snow which is quite likely to slide off sometime so I head up to the col wondering just where the path to the summit is, it’s just not clear from below. Hopefully there’s some cunning line through the rocks and vertical you can see from here.

From my zoom lens I can see the summit cross but the summit ridge looks interesting, there’s obviously a big drop this side and the map tells me it’s not much different the other side.

The ridge starts fairly reasonably but it’s pretty obvious the difficulty is around the small crag you see on the photo. The plan is to approach that, drop right and then climb up left to the knife edge ridge for the summit.

All along the ridge there’s ring bolts fitted, I assume the local CAS section will come and equip it sometime but today there’s no gear in place so I step carefully across before hitting a couple of sections with fixed chains which are useful.

Mostly I’ve not got any photographs of the awkward bits, I needed both hands to climb so I had to put the camera away for a while.

At the summit I met the couple who I’d seen in front of me just about to start their descent, I think the photo’s catch the atmosphere nicely there.

There’s a geocache at the summit, after the disparaging remarks I made the other day about geocachers this one is a case in point. It’s not been visited for a couple of years by anyone, most of the fanatics with a few thousands geocache finds to their name drive to a couple of hundred metres of the site to find it. As this one takes a T4 summit ridge and a 1000m of climbing it doesn’t get much traffic.

Ironically, I couldn’t find it though. I’ve logged my visit and that I couldn’t find it, I wonder after a couple of winters unvisited if the cache is still there really. It’s supposed to be under some rocks but there was no sign of any loose rocks and I’d be surprised if the snow hadn’t moved them around a bit, this winter was pretty average but the season before we had huge amounts of snow and it’s not unusual for rocks to get pushed 50 or 100m downslope as the snowpack moves around in the winter.

On the other hand, before I left home I was checking my crampons fitted the boots I was using and not reading the webpage for this cache, had I read the webpage I’d have seen the photo of the cache site which might have helped. I am pretty certain the cache wasn’t within 10m of the posted position but looking at the photo I’m wondering if the position was correct, as I read the photo that’s around 20m from the published position. Still, it’s a nice peak and I’ll try it again sometime, I’ll be surprised if anyone else tries in the meantime.

All in all, a great day out. It’s early season and I’m amazed this line is passable in late April so it’s a huge bonus to be able to do it.