Romantic Anniversary Weekend....

Happy Anniversary!!

...For the second year in a row, Brad and I have chosen to spend our anniversary weekend in a sweaty, crowded mountain refuge bunk room in Les Ecrins.  And to make things special this year, as we were celebrating a momentous 5 years of couple-hood, we decided to make things extra-romantic by inviting Olivier and Ian along for the adventure.

We left late morning Saturday to drive part way up the Veneon Valley (one of our favorite places) to park Olivier's Laguna on the sunny side of the valley and take a leisurely afternoon skin up to the Refuge de la Lavey. We all agreed that the refuge would be much better situated about 2 hours further up the valley in order to shorten the Sunday morning slog, but didn't complain when we arrived at the beautifully situated hut and lounged in the sun.

Refuge de la Lavey

Very warm weather and strong sun dictated a very early wake-up, and Brad and Ian regretted not having taken advantage of my roadside earplug distribution (thanks, Nancy!!) as we spent a short night in the crowded dortoir.  The gardienne was not too pleased that we disregarded her 4am wake-up time in favor of a 3am wake up, but we felt confident in our decision to start our day early to avoid too much heat on the one east-facing slope we had to descend.  

morning panorama, les Rouies in the upper left

With skis on our feet and headlamps on our heads, we left the hut (1797m) at a very romantic 4am, and slogged south down the long, flat valley before turning to begin climbing to our first high point of the day: the Col de la Lavey (3309m).  Already starting to feel the altitude and the heat of the sun, we pulled off skins and headlamps, put on our glacier gear, and quickly descended onto safer terrain on the flatter Glacier des Rouies.  

View from on high

Though it was still before 9am, we kept our re-fuel and re-skin break short while observing a steep south-facing slope purge wet, sloppy snow.  Setting a definitive turn-around time at 11, we headed up the long, gradually sloping glacier to the summit cone.  The combination of 2,300m of climbing in one day and an altitude of over 3500m slowed us all down, but especially Ian and me, who had not spent quite as much time schussing at altitude this season.  

With 360° spectacular views, we were all a little sad to call it a day so early (we would have loved to spend the whole afternoon basking), but the hot sun left no us with no choice but to point our skis downhill and slide back down the valley.   Up high, we were still early enough to have great spring corn snow as we followed our own tracks back down the glacier.  

Once down to the flat valley floor and back in the safety zone, we ate lunch and enjoyed the warmth and tried to put off the long double-poling adventure through snow-soup conditions back to the road and back to the city.  

looking up from our lunch spot
 reminds us why we get up early
(don't worry, those aren't our tracks!)

Olivier captures the lovely couple

Each weekend that we spend in the mountains, I am continuously impressed by the incredible terrain and also blown away by the proximity to Grenoble.  This fact was especially driven home last Sunday when, in the space of little more than four hours we went from being at 3500m on skis down to 200m in the sunny city where people in t-shirts and sandals were lounging at sunny cafés.  While there are so many reasons that we love were we live, these days remind us of what is certainly the most important part: 

Location, location, location. 

Part of me hesitates to even include a map-version of our itinerary since
 it will look so silly next to Brad's professional-grade ones, but here it is! 

Ian, star of our blog

Olivier, official holder of candles (i.e. third wheeler)