The most desirable line you have ever seen

[mattlucas 0]

 Quote:

Originally posted by Team snow bee:
Any of these would be pretty good http://www.da-n.co.uk/blogs/lycett/media/codeTestLines.gif

You computer people are strange

[sava 0]

yeah, a bit

 

hmm, almost at 2000 now

[bushpig 0]

snail...

[sava 0]

holy crap

you're almost at 3k.

 

I remember thinking that it'd be close for the first of us to reach 2k - and that was only a month ago!

[bushpig 0]

hehe. maybe I have been a bit hyperactive on here...

[sava 0]

yeah, just a little :-)

 

Speaking of hyperactivity, I think I should lay off the coffee for the remainder of the day.

[daver 0]

 Quote:

Originally posted by Toque:
[Q] That first air looks hairy. You can't fall there. Beyond what I can do but... [/QB]

yeah man no falls aloud. but a lot of the lines in the rockies are like that.
i don't know if am up to it either. maybe would have tried it if i had stuck around there but now i am feeling old and worn. maybe even a little mortal in my old age. my buddy mtlion was going to do it this year but he opted out for the very same reasons. the level of commitment is just too high.

[ShinyDiscoBall 2]

 

That is scary. Just looking at it.

[Fattwins 0]

the dive is great but like most of the rockies it gets its snow early and then late in the season.

[rach 1]

Meaning mid season ain't very good?

[Yuki's Passion 1]

 

heres my most desirable line

[BagOfCrisps 24]

I am not homosexual, let's get that out of the way.

 

But those breasts are not attractive. And are those "people" made of plastic?

[daver 0]

 Quote:

Originally posted by Fattwins:
the dive is great but like most of the rockies it gets its snow early and then late in the season.

yup, the january dry spell sucks. and it is WAY too cold to enjoy yourself. but come febuary thing start to pick up again. and march kicks ass.

[damian 0]

ahhh, good timing. After hanging out on the weekend in Chamonix with SJ forum dude NPM (formally woywoy), I just returned from a few days of hiking my tent (sans board or anyone else) up and down cols and valleys in the (predictable) Mont Blanc range - from France to Italy circumnavigating the western edge of the mountain range. Probably the best few days I can remember having, even with no riding. The purpose was to reconnoitre various BC itineraries for next season, especially some excellent north faces that are good riding early in the season. I could talk for effing hours about the stuff I 'found'. Anyway, on the last day of my hike I spent considerable time collecting beta on next season's most desirable line. Last week I linked a pic of it in another thread (linked again below, the one with the text, I didn't take that shot). Anyway, yesterday I made a 5 hour return trip up a glacier to stand at the base of the line. Its looking a bit sketchy now, but would have been great in early spring. It is the most desirable line to me as:

 

1. It is longer than any couloir that I have ridden (1100m vertical descent 45-50 degrees, sections of 55, 40 at the bottom).

2. It will be good experience for the more committing, longer and steeper lines in the area. Lines that I would like to build up to and tackle in a few years.

3. Most importantly, for a beginner like me, it will require considerable un-guided mountaineering effort just to reach the drop-in point. Rock falls make climbing the couloir itself a little too risky (and who wants to climb 1.1km straight up anyway?!). To get up you have to start on the reverse side of the peak, cross a narrow but steep glacier and then ascend, spending the night in a hut at 3050m to make an early 1 hour easy hike to the drop-in point at 3400m the next morning . The approach is basic alpinist stuff, but a challenge for me.

 

I took this shot yesterday. NE couloir de Petit Mont Blanc (Petit Mont Blanc is the name of the peak):

 

I got some beta shots of the approach route as well.

 

I could have just posted one line of text and a picture, but that wouldn't be in character.

 

ps - Daver, that pocket rocket lines looks serious. Not to confident on my no-fall 20 foot drops at the moment.

 

pps - during my somewhat athletic reccy trip I ate gerbil!

[daver 0]

wicked looking line man, from the arial view it looks as though it drops right into the centre of town. is that correct?

[damian 0]

Pictures can be very deceptive. It drops directly into a glacier called Glacier du Miage, right in the guts of the Mont Blanc massif and quite a long way from a town. The upper reaches of Glacier du Miage is one of my favourite places on Earth. That brown area that looks like a town is in fact a collection of rocks. The entire glacier is covered in huge rocks, floating on ice. I would say that when the aerial picture as taken the snow cover had melted from the rocks directly below left of the couloir run-out. At the furthest upper reaches of the glaciers flat area the exposed rocks taper out into just a finger of exposed rock, which is where I stood to take the picture. Further down in the lower part of the glacier (towards the valley) the glacier is covered in rocks. It is the massive volume of rocks covering the ice and filling most of the crevasses that makes walking up this glacier such an accessible breeze.

 

Just for the hell of it, some pictures.

 

The couloir is out-of-shot just over my right shoulder as I took this picture looking down the glacier towards the valley. You can see some exposed rocks to the right. With less snow and more rocks would be exposed I reckon that might be the 'town illusion'. And yeah, I have ridden all over that northerly bowl you can see on the mountain face on the opposite side of the valley (but I confess to using a heli to do so). We dropped in from the upper right ridge, late winter and full of powder all the way to the valley.

 

Looking up the glacier from near the moraine. The couloir is totally out of view on the distant left hand wall. It is literally is a river of rock on a river of ice. The picture was taken late in the evening just as an electrical thunder storm rolled in (but missed my tent). The glacier has a southerly aspect on the warmer Italian face of the range and so is already totally devoid of snow up to 2000m

 

Whilst I am at it, this shot is of what lies directly opposite the couloir. The blurred white patch at the top middle is in fact the back side of the Mont Blanc summit. It doesn't look it, but the summit is 2400m higher than where I am standing (I am at 2400m). Scale and proportion is totally out of whack in that place. I am convinced that this point is as close as you can get to the summit without mechanical means or engaging in anything harder than walking. At this time of year you can literally walk to my 2400m photo point from the town 10km away in a pair of shorts and some basic hiking boots. No other equipment required. Whilst boiling a cup of tea on the rocky glacier I watched ice and rocks smash down from the seracs on that lower gnarled looking glacier at the bottom of the picture. Two mountaineers were just ahead of me and roping up as they stepped off onto the actual glacier ice in their bid to reach the summit. Seriously hard work from this approach (although you don't go up the line in this shot. That would be suicide).

 

All this is situated on the Italian side of the mountain range, not the more well known Chamonix (French) side. So I really should be calling it Monte Bianco.

 

Back to the line. This is a close up of the entry section where it is reportedly close to 55 degrees. It is looking a bit short of snow in for my liking. My camera didn't handle the zoom so well.

[mattlucas 0]

You always impress with the pictures

Certainly makes anything we are doing over here seem soooooooooo small

[Fattwins 0]

the alps are pretty big and make everything look small. leSpud might never move back to Auz now.

 

How can he sit there and make money when he will just be dreaming non stop.

[scouser 4]

Awesome photos indeed.

[daver 0]

that brings up a good question; what do you do lespud? besides play in the alps non stop. if it is top secret we all understand and will do our best to keep it, we just want to know how we too can join the team.

[damian 0]

Thanks guys. Every time I am out in the Alps I get such a buzz. I literally have conversations with myself about the stuff I see. It is why I write so much about it. I am planning on making a website to write about the stuff that I see etc (that way I don't risk over speaking in a Japanese snow forum about me and the European Alps ).

 

I found heaps of asbestos fibres in serpentine on the glacier, it was cool! Just a few feet away I found a rock growing those pointy fingers of clear hexagonal crystals that hippies collect. And then there is the snow. It amazes me that it took so long to stumble across an environment and activity that I enjoy so much. And Fattwins is right, I don't really want to go back to Australia for the "term of my natural life" (a significant phrase in colonial days). It is just too remote and homogenised, like a massive country town in the global nation. It is a very nice country town, by all means. Could say more but wont.

 

Daver - I am part of the big nasty financial industry. I don't fit in but I have a skill that they demand and so it is where I ply my trade. I left my employer of recent years to work with an old boss for another company and a new city.... and wrangled it to take 2 or 3 months off between jobs. I start at the end of the month. So for the last 2.5 months I have been free as a bee and trying to make up for years living locked in a city. I wouldn't mind doing the mountain thing for a living, but so would everyone. My Free Bee status ends in 2 weeks, or so I thought. Last night I mangled and mutilated my big toe opening the door in a frigging gelato shop whilst wearing thongs (flip-flops for the giggling poms). There was blood and swearing. It was nasty. It is currently heavily bandaged and encased in a lid from a deodorant bottle for protection. This kills my Italian Alps hiking trip starting tomorrow and also everything else outdoors for a while. I might even have to wear a sandal to work on my first week or so unless it heals quickly. I will be the new boy wearing a gay sandal. Great.

 

I can't believe I was taken out of the game buying an icecream.

 

As for the alps seeming so big, I was thinking about just that thing as I sat making yet another cup of tea in a col, taking in the view. I honestly was, I even wanted to pose the question on the forum. Why do the Alps seem so famous and most often the visual symbol of pretty alpine life? They are always cited as being massive steep mountains, but America wins that hands down, doesn't it? Surely there are sights and scenery just the same in other populated ranges, like the Rocky Mountains in America? I had just hauled my pack up from the valley below and was checking out the tasty line in the opposite peak. Seeing as it fits into this thread topic, this is a close up of the couloir that I spotted in the scenery that I was enjoying. Through the pinch and past the second chicane the snow starts to taper out, but I reckon you could ride to the very bottom earlier in spring.

 

Anyway, why is it that the Alps are always the striking image of mountain scenery and so called extreme descents? The American Rockies have about 50 peaks higher than 4300m (14,000 feet) http://americasroof.com/fourteeners.shtml whilst the European Alps have only 13 peaks above 14,000 feet. This can be expanded to 32 if you include associated summits, eg, a 14000 peak that is separated from another 14000 peak by a col of more than a certain depth. I don't know the American treatment of adjacent peaks which share the same 'base'. An example is Mont Blanc. It has 4 additional summits that make the grade, but are so close to the Mont Blanc summit itself that they are really only associated summits, not stand alone mountains in there own right. The Rockies are also longer than the Alps at 4800km long. The Alps, accounting for their curved shape, are only a range of about 700km, and only about 400km long over their more famous and higher ranges (France, Swiss, Italy and into Austria where height drops off).

 

I have never been to the Rockies, but this is what I guess to be the reason:

 

1. the Alps have more peaks crammed into a much smaller area. The Rockies cover a massive area and Colorado is really the concentrated area of high peaks.

 

2. the Alps at times seem to be more glacier than rock. There are glaciers everywhere, 100's of them. This creates a different geography to the Rocky Mountains which only has a few glaciers (why is that?). Glacial ice also allows snow to stay in step lines a lot longer into spring.

 

3. The Alps have pretty narrow valleys filled with green grass and 'cute' farms in summer. Tourists like taking pictures of that stuff. I can't comment on the Rockies, but it seems the Alps have more 'pretty postcard' appeal.

 

All in all, America has way more mountains, more snow and more summits.... yet the Alps seem to get more attention. This observation is based also from my time as a resident in Australia which essentially has no real mountains. From that neutral position it seemed that the Alps where crowned snow sports mecca over the far more abundant play ground in the Rockies.

 

(Sorry for ignoring Canada. I know the Rocky Mountains run into BC and also that Canada has other ranges of its own. I just chose the American Rocky Mountains as they are a defined mountain range in a developed nation (unlike the Andes, Himalayan ranges etc). It was also much easier to gather summit data on the Rockies for just America rather than America + Canada.

[SnowJapan.Com#4 5]

 Quote:

that way I don't risk over speaking in a Japanese snow forum about me and the European Alps

No need to worry about that spud, your posts are always welcome here.

Good to hear about your adventures.

[Goemon 0]

le spud's least desirable line:

 

(sorry to hear about your injury ruining the end of your free bee buzz; heard you met up with NPM recently?)

[damian 0]

luckily the shop was mostly empty as in strictly Catholic Italy I let loose with one of my loudest ever screams of 'Jeeesuuuus faaaarkin Chrrrrrrist!' as I fell to the floor in agony and blood started to pump.

 

To add the the growing collection of SJ.com foot pics, here is my injured left foot. I included my new ice axe as otherwise it would have had very little to do with snow. I bought the axe on the weekend as I had no one else's to borrow like I normally do. Following from a thread last week, I thought of a benefit of the ice axe in addition to crampons as an aid to ascent: cutting steps into ice or steep neve. Never done it myself as there is always someone in the team ahead of me. But a very useful technique of getting over slippery bits with exposure.

 

Thanks to the functional and trendy transparent deodorant lid, You can see some blood soaking through the bandage.

 

Yeah, saw NPM + partner in Chamonix. They are campervaning in a VW around Europe and we camped in the same camp site as them. We went for a few walks around the place. Saw a small ibex and 2 snakes up in the mountains. Had a so-so meal in town with a few beers whilst being served by a rather funny waiter who we loudly and appropriately named Toupee... until we realised that it was a French word.

 

ps - thanks sj4. I will still spout on here. But will reserve my reeeealllly long ramblings for my website.

[daver 0]

i think one of the biggest reasons lespud is the history of alpinism in the alps. and just overall access. the canadian peaks are also heavely glaciated; large areas of the continental divide are seemingly endless icefields. but the large majority of the ranges are inaccessable to all but the most dedicated.

 

the canadian rockies had their time in the spot light during the early part of the 20th century and late 19th. at that time, there was a push to ban all mountaineering in europe after a number of deaths. this co-encided exactly with the completion of the CP Rail line. unlike the railway south of the border, the Canadian Pacific Railway sliced right through the biggest ranges with the biggest peaks in the area. the european mountaineering community became very excited about the prospects of thousands of virgin peaks just waiting to be summited.

at the same time the banff sulfer springs hot springs were discovered. a long with many others along the rail route. this was also a time when hotspring therapy was becoming extremely chic, and the european elite were flocking to asia thanks to the research done by dr franz balz. the rail route across canada became the option of choice and as a result CPR build a series of high class resort/hotels along the way. two of which were right in the heart of the canadian rockies: the banff springs hotel, and the chatue lake louise. soon across europe canada became synonymous with images of massive peaks and tremendous hanging glaciers. it was the epitome of unspoiled alpine. unfortunatly however, with the onset of WW1 trans-atlantic crossing became less and less desirable thanks to the ever looming threat of german U-boats. as such, the booming era of the Canadian rockies came to a close.

 

there you have it.