Ski Touring in April/May 2006

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I didn't really plan to do much ski touring this April and May, but by coincidence I didn't end up doing much else besides just wallowing in snow.. My original plan was to go to the Austrian Alps around Eastern holiday, but the weather forecast for the Alps was not good, so I headed to good old High Tatra mountains in Slovakia, just like I do most winter weekends.


Eastern holiday in Tatras 14-17.4.2006

On Friday I joined up with some friends and we did one of the classic ski tours in the Tatra mountains - we went up and down Soliskovy couloir and then up the Mlynicka valley and through Bystre saddle to Furkotska valley. The later valley is a beautiful untouched place where very little people go in the winter, yet it is so close to the Strbske Pleso city. On Saturday we had amazing powder snow and sunny day on the way through Zlomiskova valley up to Vysoka. I wanted to climb and ski Vysoka peak very much, but snow conditions did not look good. On the way to the saddle just below Vysoka we saw a little avalanche set off by a Czech skier, so we decided to turn back and ski back down the valley. Nevertheless, this was a very nice but short ski tour and I promised myself to come back to this area sometime in the near future. On Sunday I skied a very nice and steep couloir called "Sedlo za Prostrednym Hrotom" with a friend Martin. It took us good 4 hours to climb it up on crampons, as we were chatting along the way.. The snow was solid as the orientation of the couloir was east-south, so we felt quite safe. Then we had a great time skiing back to the valley, this must have been one of my most pleasant descents of this year. On Monday the weather was bad, so I travelled back to Bratislava.


Trip to Vent in Austria 19-23.4.2006

Right after I came back to Bratislava I found out that the weather forecast for the Alps has changed, so we decided to hit the road to Austria the next day. Our original plan was to ski north face of Hintere Schwarze and Similaun. These are both fairly extreme descents, both about 54 degree steep and approx 300-400 meters high. First day we got up to Martin Busch Hut and were surprised at how crowded it was. Next morning the sky was completely clear, so we approached Hintere Schwarze. On the way there, still being close to the hut, I stopped by to look at a map. As I pulled out the map out of a plastic cover, the cover slipped out of my hand and was flying in the wind away from me and towards a group of Austrians. The guy at the front did notice both the flying cover and me running towards it on my skis. All he had to do was to bend over and stop the flying cover, but he didn't care to help at all. We then talked with Martin and Robo, my partners, about how we see the Westerners as selfish and unfriendly.. this story could not happen in Eastern Europe.. Martin told me a short story from the French Alps about him skiing through a crevasses glacier in the footprints of a French guy.. But the French guy stopped and asked Martin not to follow him - that it is his own know-how to be able to find his way across the glacier and he does not want to share that knowledge. That's crazy ! In Slovak mountains we greet foreigners with smile, hot cup of tea and offer advice and help. It is a strange feeling that in the Alps, unlike most mountains in the world, one can not rely on help or friendship from other fellow climbers or skiers.

When we came down to the Hintere Schwarze north wall, we saw that the bottom 50 meters of it is pure ice. We nevertheless decided to climb it and also to try to ski it down. After the first 50-m rope length we came from pure ice to area where hard ice was covered by approx. 10 cm of powder. Those two layers were not integrated at all and Martin, who was climbing first, would occasionally set off a small avalanche and cover me by snow. It took us a long time to climb those 350m, as we took it fairly easy.. Robo then tried a few turns down the wall but he immediately set off a small avalanche so we gave up the north wall and skied down the normal route.

Next day we went to the Similaun peak. We avoided the crowds by oversleeping good 2-3 hours. Unfortunately it was clear from distance that the north wall of Similaun cannot be non-stop skied because of rocky section in the middle. Not enough snow this year. We also later found out that snow on this wall is very unstable. So we skied down the west ridge and then climbed up back to the normal route. Both were excellent skiing terrain and we had a lot of fun skiing it.

Final day we went to ski some 3000m peak I can't remember the name of. It was very close from the spot where they found Otzi - a famous frozen man mummy who died there approx 3300 B.C. We took it easy on this day and just had pure fun skiing 35-40 degree slopes of excellent snow.. Overall - its a pity we couldn't accomplish our original objectives, but it was still a very nice trip. The only negative feelings came from how the Austrians treat us - even now 17 years after the fall of communism. The last day on the Martin Bush hut the owner told us we have to move away from our room to the top floor room, which was a lot less comfortable. We figured it was because we were not paying for the local overpriced food and carried our own, so we had to make space for more respected western guests.


Trip to Verbier and Chamonix 25.4.-2.5.2006


As I was standing on Hintere Schwarze on the previous days, I had a phone call from Maros, a long time friend, who told me about his trip to Switzerland and France. Maros is a respected climber with an 8000 meter peak trophy (Shisha Pangma) and a great buddy, so I said yes immediately. However I realized that people are leaving on this trip the next day after my return from Austria to work. I knew it wouldn't be easy explaining to my boss that after 2 weeks of ski touring I need another week off.. But I didn't have much work to do this month, so he agreed. So I went back to Bratislava, did the laundry and jumped into a car on the way back to the Alps. We drove to the Swiss town of Verbier in a group of seven.

We set up our tents in a lovely little village close to the Le Chablix town and hit the local pub. The locals were sipping wine and were probably not used to seeing much tourists. After a few beers we were mixed in with the locals and talked about lots of things. Next morning we set of for our trip which was copying most of the famous Haute Route Ski Tour (a week long traverse from Chamonix to Zermatt)

When we got to a 3100m peak called Cabane de Prafleuri, we were surprised to find a large tent camp set up there by the swiss army. They had a helicopter flying around there in a very bad weather, which mostly shocked Buro - a member of our team, who is a professional mountain rescue guy from Tatras who knows a lot about flying in helicopters in bad weather mountains. So we saluted the swiss army boys and told them we respect their pilots flying in poor visibility like that. They smiled and unexpectedly invited us for a little lunch at 3100m altitude. I may say that Swiss army food tastes excellent, even though after a whole day of walking the mountains I might have lost an objective opinion on food taste. We found out from the soldiers that the camp was set up because a big ski tour race called Patrouille des Glaciers was to take place the following days. This is the longest and largest three-day ski-mountaineering competition in Europe with almost 3000 people taking part. It's been called Paris-Dakar on skis, but it's more skiing's answer to the Ironman. The original race was created in 1943 as an exercise for Swiss mountain soldiers protecting the southwestern Alps from a German invasion. The conceit? Teams of three had to deliver a secret message to a sergeant in Verbier by a certain time.

That night we slept on the Prafleuri hut at the bottom of the Prafleuri glacier. On the way there we met a group of British skiers who lost a ski, so we spent some time trying to help them find it with avalanche probes. The hut was full of Swiss soldiers, we talked to them about life in the Swiss army. Some facts I remember that were surprising - each soldier has a uniform and a gun at his home, so that he could go to duty at anytime.. and I think they told us that their compulsory military service is 20 weeks first year and then 3 weeks each of the following 8 years. Quite some effort considering the Swiss army in its entire history never had any armed conflicts.

The next day we skied around the Dix water damn, supposedly the highest dam in the world. We watched the Patrouille des Glaciers race for a while and then relaxed in the next hut. The following day we went up to the Pigne d'Arolla peak (3796m). To avoid the crowds I raced to the top solo and had some nice privacy on the top before other people from the hut came. Then we slept on the Vignettes hut, but decided to ski down to Arolla village the next day, because of bad weather.

That day we moved to Chamonix and relaxed by wandering around the city and doing some rock climbing on the rocks there. We wanted to ski Mont Blanc, but people were telling us that there is too much snow there, nobody has been on top for several days. We also heard about a group of 5 people who were in an avalanche on Mount Maudit on the way to Mont Blanc and were rescued by a helicopter with severe injuries. So we decided to do an easy trip to Mont Blanc du Tacul (4248m). This was a nice one day trip, fairly easy ascend and descend, with a bit of adrenalin jumping a few crevasses. Then we skied down the Mer de Glace back to Chamonix.

Overall the trip to Switzerland and France was quite easy in terms of technical difficulty. I wanted to discover the area personally, get to know it better so that I could go back next year hopefully for a month or two and do some more serious things..


back to High Tatras 5-8.5.2006

After 3 days in work I was heading to the mountains again, for a 3-day weekend. This time I went with Ivana, who is still recovering from bad injuries she suffered in an avalanche in early March. She wanted a small test of her skiing abilities after laying in bed for two months, just before the skiing season ends. We were supposed to spend time in the highest Slovak hut - Chata na Rysoch just below the 2500m high Rysy peak standing on the Slovak/Polish border. The weather forecast was not promising, so we packed some extra bottles of wine.. On the way to the hut, the visibility was very bad and we got lost for about 15 minutes as we couldn't locate the exact spot of the fixed ropes leading to the final climb to the hut. The following days the weather was like in January - strong winds, poor visibility, fresh snow, high avalanche danger.. we even had to cary crampons and poles on the fairly dangerous 100m traverse leading from the hut to the toilet 😊 So we didn't accomplish much besides skiing the Vaha saddle and hanging around the hut in a big group of people we knew from various places.. And the last day we skied down in 10-meter visibility and the good news is that Ivana did fairly OK..

There is still lots of snow in the Tatras, but the snow quality is poor and skiing after April 15th is officialy not allowed by park rangers, so I think its time to put away the skis and pull out my new kayak 😊

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Photos

Zlomiskova dolina
me and Katka

Sedlo za Prostrednym Hrotom
ascend..

Similaun
..and its N-face

Maros climbing Mont Blanc du Tacul
Chamonix village in distance, 3000 meters bellow

Brano jumping a crevass
a bit of show-off as a group of Austrian skiers were belaying this crevass on a rope a few meters aside..

Chata na Rysoch (2390m)
3 days of bad weather around the hut..