FUNWEEK - aka. “No powder on a friends day” - February 11-18, 2012

            Earlier this month, a set of very fun people and circumstances converged in Grenoble. Carrie and Thad's and plan to live in Paris for three months turned out to be the perfect set up for a week of Alps skiing – Carrie was on school break (on top of perma-vacay), and Thad was able to take his first full week off from Google since beginning work there two years ago. Brian, Thad’s old college roommate and generally great dude, flew out from LAX to Paris with a dream and his cardigan, not to mention some standard California-issue Volkls with Marker Dukes. Definitely not a Tahoe party here in the Alps, but Brian took the Euro ski mountaineering game in stride without missing a step. Hillary and I were both on school vacation, and so the FUNWEEK stage was set…

Round 1 – Refuge de la Pra, Belledonne 

The generous and flexible vacation plan of French government employees came through once again and our friend Olivier was able to take two days off from work and join for us a three-day trip in Belledonne. Although communicating with five Americans proved to be a challenge, Olivier did coin the phrase that is the title of this post... The snow was indeed terrible (wind f***$$ on all aspects above treeline), but multiple 8000-9000 ft. summits and two days of undercast big pretty mostly compensated for the crusty survival skiing conditions.  

This photo is not posed, seriously. Left to right: Thaddeus, Carrie, Hill, Brad, Olivier (if you find yourself asking the question, "Where is Brian?", Brian is behind the camera*).

 A few more blower face shots before dinner at the hut. 

Hey look, it's Thad and his old college roommate, Brian! On the summit of the Grande Lance de Domène (9,120 ft).  

Carrie getting after some heady ski mountaineering on the Grande Lauzière (8,992 ft). Myself, Thad and Hill got stuffed trying to ski this peak in 2009 during our Belledonne début together. Anybody else scoping that couloir in the background?

*Admittedly there is there some inside ball going on around here -- if you say, "Where is Brian?" to any French person, they will quickly respond "Brian is in the kitchen!" and burst out laughing. This is because the national English learning curriculum includes a unit on I'm guessing household vocabulary and questions relating to place, featuring Brian.


Round 2 - Téléphérique de la Grave/la Meije 

Frozen pipes foiled our plan to spend two nights with François and Mathilde at François' family place near la Grave, which is too bad because this is one of the most special places I've encountered (Hillary took the blog cover photo of the Meije practically from their doorstep, plus the wall decorations feature vintage wooden piolets). So we settled for one day of firm, no fall-zone couloir skiing and a night at the local hostel, Gîte le Rocher, before starting our hut trip a day earlier than planned. We also had an off-the-chain dinner Au Vieux Guide - tartiflette, ravioles, rabbit something or other, foie gras... I still don't feel worthy....

It was the day after Valentine's Day after all. 

Instructions for going #2?

Oh hey, it's Thad and his old college roommate. 

Coolest tram ever.

Round 3 - Four-day hut skiing extravaganza in les Cerces

Day one was super, super windy and made for combat-esque conditions: the five of us hunkered down behind a ridge, followed by an unsuccessful attempt at making forward progress crawling on all fours with our skis on our backs. Things got a little weird up there, for sure. Fortunately we were able to pull off some whiteout navigating over to a lower, slightly less windy pass, which put us back on track for our point A to B tour to the hut. The contrast of one moment being stressed, scared and seriously contending followed by the next ensconced in a cozy dining room being told where to dry our things by a friendly face and served hot tea with spiced bread consistently blows my mind. I think “refuge,” the French word for hut, is particularly appropriate in this sense.

For the following three days the wind died down and the sun came out. Snow conditions remained either lunar or dangerously wind loaded, and for the most part we oriented our agenda towards epic-scenery-low-angle-schussing. Brian pointed out that we can all look forward to practicing this form of the sport at least through our 60s, which sounds pretty good to me. 

The evil W at work. 

Bad snow for skiing = great cramponing conditions (!)  Heading to the summit of the Pic du Lac Blanc (9,776 ft). 

Hillary captures Thad and Carrie shredding some of the only good snow of the trip. I swear, sometimes there is powder in the French Alps -- not often, but it happens.  Note the Barre des Ecrins (13,454 ft) and lots of other burly Ecrin peaks in the background. 

N'importe quoi! Needless to say it's been difficult for all of us to make the transition from FUNWEEK back to the routine...

And lastly, here is a link to Brian's comprehensive photo album, Big Ski Adventure.