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La Vallee Blanche

crank

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Far from the northeast I know. We skied in Chamonix week before last when everyone here was enjoying fresh powder we had ice and slush and beautiful Alpes.

Here's my edit.

 

jimk

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Wow. Great. Awesome. Bucket list for sure! Thanks for sharing Crank. It looks like some training on MRG's polished rocks is good practice for Vallee Blanche?? It looks like a mixed bag of skiing, touring, and treking. Were you able to ski the whole thing or have to take off skis and walk parts? Other than the knife edge entrance walk was there any real steep Paradise (MRG) type terrain you were required to ski?
Enjoyed your narration, but missed how much did it cost and how long did it take?
Where else did you ski over there and how was that?
 

crank

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Jimk, There was plenty of steep. The first run we had a couple sections of steepish and moguled skiing amounting to about 1500 feet of vert and the rest was the flatter stuff. No walking or skating really other the a few hundred yards on the spine at the top to get to where you can put your skis on. At one point you hike up about 500 feet of vertical and once you are on top of that ridge you ski down to town. If the snow had been better we would have had a fantastic, over 3k vertical steep tree run down to Chamonix. A it was we had to stay on the switchbacked trail you saw in the video.

For our second run we took a steeper route down and there was a long section of quite steep terrain. Give the conditions ( refrozen spring) everything was hard as a rock and crunchy. The steep stuff was a bit scary because if you fell you were going to slide a long ass way, probably right down into the glacier. Easily as steep as paradise but nothing so tight. Although there are plenty of tight cullers you can ski in the region. I intend to go back when there is powder and ski more guided off piste! Chamonix is an amazing place to ski, there are a bunch of ski areas with a wide range of terrain. Grand Montet is known for challenge and it does. We took a bus ride through Mont Blanc to Courmayeur Italy one day and the skiing there was amazing as well. The top cable car there is all off piste.
 
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