Wrong way down the Valley
Skiing l'Envers du Plan, Chamonix, 1990s
IT WAS AN ELDERLY GOLF WITH EDINBURGH PLATES. We squeezed in and drove through the streets of a still waking Chamonix: ice on the puddles, frost on the windscreen, but up high, so high you had to crane your neck, the spires of pink granite were warming in the first of the sun.
It was our mountain guide's car. Willie Todd, ex-Glenmore Lodge, ex-Fort William. Three clients aged 30, 40 and 50-something; Willie's wife Cath. At the Aiguille du Midi télépherique, more professionals: Gavin, boss of Ski Weekend and his hotshot pal Andy.
The Midi cablecar travels at 11 m/sec, as fast as a speedboat. It's new, and well-damped against rocking, and safer than most houses I'm sure. But unless you enjoy being winched vertically up a thousand-metre rockface, take my advice and keep your eyes on the floor.
Everyone tells you about it, but I had no idea of the exposure you get on the notorious knife-edge from the top station to the start of the skiing. Willie bravely roped up with his clients. "If someone slips, you just wrap yourself round one of the poles." It was slippy, new snow and plenty of it. We grabbed the thick hemp fixed rope like grim death, and changing direction presented a major challenge. Urgent Frenchmen edged below us on skis. After quarter of an hour, the slope on one side offered a faint chance of survival, then suddenly we could walk again, slake those dry throats and drink in the panorama.
The joy of standing upright merged with a drunken jumble of images: the far-off Matterhorn and Monte Rosa; the dome of Mont-blanc, 1200 m and 8 hours above; the huge shimmering snow-dunes around us, and the curving river of ice, already bearing insect-size skiers down the Vallée Blanche.
The Vallée looked surprisingly flat. Maybe it is; we never found out, for our way took a more direct line ("extreme and perilous" according to the Good Ski Guide) to the foot of the Aiguille du Plan. The Plan has a south-facing glacier, l'Envers du Plan, that gives its name to our route.
"You can't miss this," they'd told us, "it's in fantastic condition." When the binding clicked shut like a closing lock, I began to test the proposition, quickly homing in on some breakable crust and losing the chance of setting a rhythm. Willie led; clients were under orders to follow his tracks and never to ski below him, as the big December dump, and the high-level snow earlier that week, had hidden most of the crevasses. Cath was backmarker, attending to stragglers and their confidence.
Five minutes into the journey we caught up with the leadership peering over a lip of snow. There was a runout, but the slope was convex and a crevasse lurked just to the left. So, "I'm side-slipping" I decided. "It's no steeper than the Tiger", Willie said. "I haven't skied the Tiger!" Mel and I inched down, dislodging what seemed tons of snow.
A longer slope, just as steep, followed. The pattern of yesterday started again: I tried a more or less clumsy turn, popped out of a ski and faceplanted. Gavin and Andy were skiing straight out of the brochure and their flowing athletic jump turns branded slope after virgin slope as the snow got better and better. "All right, Mike?" What can you say? I was still going.
We were well over toward the Plan now but had 1500 m vertical to lose in not much horizontal. Andy and Gavin pushed ahead, to catch the 13.00 train from Montenvers. Things slowed down. And things began to improve. We took a break, perched on a few square metres of safe ground. The Todds produced coffee in a professional-looking flask, and shared it round. Willie also unearthed a screwdriver and told me to up the setting of my heel bindings. We let through an unguided Dutch couple who'd been behind us, perhaps tagging along.
And then, as we blundered down the next bit of soft stuff, Cath said "Haven't you skied on powder much? Well, clamp your feet right together. And bounce: get a strong bounce going, you'll find you get a spring back from the snow." So that was it: never mind skis shoulder-width apart, invisible unweighting, independent leg action. On an easy-angled bit, starting the big drop to the Mer de Glace, I found the big trampoline under the snow, bounced and turned and started to laugh.
We rounded a buttress of the Plan, sunlit orange granite with tattered climbers' slings. Way down in the shadows was the Mer de Glace. All that thousand metres was steep and none of it was scary. The final gully recalled the lower Ciste on Cairngorm, with more rock but less ice. Things came back from training. What was it – check and rebound? short swings? It all flowed together and I thought (wrongly) that I never wanted to ski on a piste again.
Reaching the Mer de Glace was like shooting out from the rapids and gliding into a big, quiet pool. I stared back at the way we had come; the skyline was a long way up. Then we skated off into the sunshine for lunch, the rest of the Todds' coffee and a flask of duty-free. Nobody seemed too hungry.
We were back among lots of people for the rest of the journey: poling and skating the flat bits, always aware of crevasses, staring down the cold green pits at the snout of the glacier, wobbling up fixed ladders to the railway terminus.
Back in town it was still a sunny afternoon and from a pavement table we watched parapentes circling the cobalt sky round the Aiguille. It was the third week in January.