Biglines Continue In France

March 27th, 2007 at 06:36am Vanessa Pierce 8

Ten yeas ago, the now-receding glacier at La Grave-La Meije made Trifide chutes sound like a suicidal ski area. Xavier Cret, one of the best guides in La Grave, pointed the chutes out to our crew – pro skier Jessica Baker, photographer Heather Erson, filmmaker Ryan VanLanen, and me – while we were on the Telepherique lift.

Taking some turns into St. Christophe. Photo by Heather Erson

“Twenty people died there that year,” he said. “They fell and hit the wall.” “The wall” is a huge rock on skier’s left midway down the main couloir. Cret recalled the time he saw a girl “in a wedge” attempting to ski the chute. He yelled, “no,” but it was too late and she fell, hit the wall, and died. He couldn’t do anything to stop it.

Today the glacier has completely receded from the chutes, making them even more popular and less foreboding. But on the way in, VanLanen caught an edge traversing along the exposed cliff band and had a heart palpitation. Breathing a little heavier, we down climbed over another exposed area before making it into the “1” couloir. Cret pointed to the wall and reminded us: “Twenty people died here that year.”

The 45-degree couloir was full of powder and not nearly as exposed farther down, just a wide-open field that dropped into the gut of the mountain where the bright-blue glaciers came so close that you could touch them (and even play in them, like Baker and VanLanen did the next day).

Trifide was the last shot of the day. Our warm-up was a 6,000-foot couloir, La Voute, which is a classic line from the top of the glaciated ski area to the road beneath. It demanded two repels and quads of steel.

“This is a no-fall zone,” Baker called up to me as she skied into the first repel. I slide slipped down watching small slabs move out from under my feet worrying that it would take me and the skiers below over the edge. The rest of the ski was an equivalent adventure that included powder skiing, avoiding avalanche debris, and moving along quickly to evade the runout of “Big Baby.”

“We cannot spend much time in this couloir,” said Cret, pointing up to the massive blue serac he endearingly calls “Big Baby” that hung over the top of the chute. “It can fall.”

So we continued on until the hot snow started rotting out while we were on a scree field, about 500 vertical feet from the road. “This is more technical than anything on La Grave,” Baker said laughing as she and the crew did “falling leafs” while weaving through the rocks, steering clear of thorn bushes, and streams to emerge on the road that led back to town.

On the last day of our stay, we bid au revoir to Hotel La Chaumine and took one more trip on the Telepherique. After a short Poma ride, we arrived at the top of the ski area and decided to drop over the backside into St. Christophe, a massive valley with a four-mile traverse out into the town of St. Christophe. Our turns down were buttery fun. Massive peaks surrounded us, extending into the sky. We felt lucky to have been able to share the slopes with the mountain residents.

Walking down the valley into the town of St. Christophe. Photo by Heather Erson.

The sun started to set, and we realized we had to go. Wet slides on the south side had slid down nearly every couloir during the last week or so. After an icy traverse, river crossing, down climbing, and a walk through the most beautiful woods – where purple flowers were beginning to peak through – we saw St. Christophe – a classic hillside town tucked within the French Alps.

A graveyard greeted us: the crucifix, the main focal point. We walked along the street and arrived at La Cordee, the restaurant in town that we had heard so much about. Famished, we ordered the full-meal deal: bottle of wine, salad, veal, barley, espresso, and rhubarb and apple torte …

A perfect conclusion to our biglines adventure in France.

Entry Filed under: Resorts, Sports Women, Europe, People, Extremes, Women, Backcountry, Ski-Mountaineering, Safety, La Grave, France