FrenchWards: June 2015

While Lisa and the kids went to Switzerland, I set off on an adventure to meet my friend David Rosenberg in Italy. David is also a professor at Utah State, and is on sabbatical in Italy near Lake Como.
He has an excellent blog of his experience, including photos from this trip, at his blog. http://snowyphotosandtravels.blogspirit.com/

David and I met almost exactly in between Lyon and Como, in Aosta, Italy. You might remember this is where the Ward Family spent February ski vacation. Our friend Silvana, the owner of the apartment where we stayed, suggested a guide for our trip.

In the Utah, I normally look for sparsely populated places to ski, and my goal is almost always to find very nice snow, as opposed to, say, reaching the summit of a particular peak. However, in the Alps this can be a problem as there is a lot of real estate above tree line, a lot of glaciers with crevasses, and quite a bit of the time visibility is limited. Thus, rather than strike out on our own in search of good snow, David and I hired a guide to take us skiing.

When we booked Paolo it was not completely clear to me that we were agreeing to basically go to the summit of the Gran Paradiso (GP). GP is a 4,061 peak (13,323.5 ft) in a national park of the same name. To access the peak the closest town is called Pont (elevation 1,900m or ~6000 ft). Because this would be too much to do in one day, we also rented a bed in the Refugio Vittorio Emmanuale. I was very pleased with this idea as I had always wanted to stay in a refugio. In case you are not familiar, these are mountain huts/hotels with dormatory-style sleeping arrangements and communal meals. In addition, they sell beer and wine!!

So, what follows is a pictoral documentation of mine and David's trip to the summit of Gran Paradiso (and back) with the help of our guide Paolo.

Here is a map showing Lyon, Como and Parco Nazionale Gran Paradiso. As you can see, the meeting spot was centrally located. To get to Gran Paradiso from Lyon I drove towards Geneva, then Chamonix, and through the Mont Blanc tunnel into Italy. I left at about 7:00 am and around 9:00 am I realized I had not brought my passport. I could not remember if they had passport control at the Mont Blanc tunnel and was not sure whether to drive back to Lyon to get my passport, or to gamble. Luckily, the gamble paid off and they did not check passport, or drivers license.

On to the pictures....

The town of Plan D'Indrod,
our meeting place

Selfie #1

The trailhead.
We changed over into skis
and set off towards the refugio.

Selfie #2 looking up the valley.

Another picture of the valley.
We turned left aprox. 1km up and started
switching back up the side walls.

David Rosenberg

A lot of the early hike was made without skis
as it was spring and the South West faces had melted.
This is where we finally made it to permanent snowline.

The Refugio.
According to our guide Paolo, there are over 50 similar refugios
just in the Aosta region. He said he has been to all of them

The front door.
Leave the ski out!!

After we checked into our 'room' we decided

to keep hiking in search of some turns.

This is about as high as we made it on the first day.
As you can see, other people had been here.

The refugio is down at the lower left
of the valley in this picture.

The views were not bad!

Panorama shot.

The snow was pretty good.

Back at the refugio for the night. This is just one rack of ski boots out of about 5. In total the refugio holds between 125 and 150 people. One amazing thing is the sheer amount of equipment that we all had. Each skier had boots, skis, skins, poles, an avalanche beacon, a probe, a backpack and crampons. Even though I try to buy my gear cheap the combined price of my equipment is probably about $1,500.

Neither David nor I had crampons. Here Paolo is fitting them to our boots.

Buona mattina

Selfie trying to look like I actually got some sleep in the hot, noisy, smelly bunk.

Getting ready to head to the summit of Gran Paradiso. Out of the ~150 people who stay in the refugio each night, about 145 are either heading to the summit of Gran Paradiso, or have just returned. As I mentioned before, neither David nor I am at all used to ski touring with ~75-100 close friends.

7:00amish after some coffee and a roll with butter and jam.

Once we left the Refugio, we joined into the long

caravan of hikers all headed towards the summit.

Beaucoup de monde! Tanti genti!

I believe the peak out there is Monte Viso.
This peak is prominently visible from Torino, which is east, or left in the picture.

Well worn trail

David wasn't really checking the map for direction.
Rather to understand the surroundings.
As you might have noticed, we are all going the same place.

Finally, the summit ridge.

I was starting to feel the 9 months of wine,

bread, foie gras and cheese that has

accumulated around my midsection.

This is getting near the summit.

Looking south.
In the distance you can see the end of the Alps,
and cloud covered Torino valley.

Looking North East towards some of
the high Alps like the Matterhorn and Monte Rosa.

This is the gathering place for summiting Gran Paradiso. You can see a rope slung over the person in black's shoulder and a harness around their legs and waist. Here everyone took off their skis and put on crampons. As it turns out, getting to the summit involves some technical moves.

We are close to the summit. At this point the path is
single file which made it busy with lots of
people going up and coming down.

In front of the person in green is the hard part. There was an exposed section we had to navigate with around a 400' fall to the right. Having loads of people waiting to go up and come down on either side made the moment a little tense.

The guy in green has now successfully crossed. At the crossing, Paolo clipped into two sections anchored into the rock. He then belayed us as we did the same. To cross the section it was necessary to scale a piece of snow covered rock with the metal spikes on our boots. With the altitude and crowd it was a bit unnerving.