Petite Aiguille Verte

We’d set the alarm to get us out early today; it failed! We got to the Grands Montets lift station in Argentiere at 9am-ish (not too bad, but a half hour later than the first lift at 8.30am as planned). Our problem turned out not to be our comfortable bed though. The combination of the bank holiday skiing crowds and the fact that today was the first day of the end of season “get your second day of skiing for just €1” offer meant that the queue was ridiculous! :angry: Two hours later we’d got half way up the mountain to the Lognan station, another hour later and we’d finally got to the top station! 🙁

This time wasting (queuing) had put any ideas of our planned route, the Chevalier Couloir, to rest. While we may have had time if we could keep to guidebook times, we knew that our un-acclimatised legs and lungs would struggle to keep to that timetable. Plus, there was a forecast risk of showers later in the afternoon. So, we opted for the classic NNE (Half Moon) Ridge instead, returning via the Ordinary Route back to the lift station.

This is a great, short, alpine route that we had done before; nearly eight years ago on our honeymoon! 😉

After the route we sat in the sun, which was streaming through a break in the clouds that had built up and had now engulfed all of the higher tops – it was looking like the forecast was correct – for a change.

It was time to descend. To add more sport to our day we’d brought our skis and ski boots and left them at the lift station for the long (over 2000m of vertical) black ski run back to the car park. The top few hundred metres were tough re-finding our ski legs (especially with super heavy packs on, full of climbing kit and mountain boots). After that, the first third was good skiing 😀 , the middle third was tiring 😮 , and the bottom third was really awful 😥 ! Although the piste does still go all the way to the car park, it would be kind to call the heavy-wet-slush fun in any way!

Ah, as Boris might say, “best considered in retrospect”; a great day out! 😛