Traverse of Col Du Belvedere

What a day it was! Blue skies, views as far as you could see, and barely a even a breeze… We packed our bags, had a quick breakfast at ‘Le Petit Social’ and nearly, caught the first Flegere lift of the day.
A button lift up Floria and it was time to head off piste and contour around the mountain in the direction of Lac Blanc.

We skinned across the middle of Lac Blanc, and continued upwards towards the col. At the col, I found the anchor points for the ropes.
Whilst sorting kit out, some locals caught up and skied, with difficulty, down towards the Berard Glacier.

We’d planned to abseil this section (2x 60m descents) after I descended first, I found the locals setting up an abseil for the second half of the descent, as they’d decided the snow wasn’t in good enough condition to continue without the aid of a rope.
El arrived down to our ledge like an absolute pro… Abseiling with skis on was a first for both of us, but El made it look much smoother!

After abseiling the next 60m the angle had lessened enough that we judged we could ski it. Our only problem was that time had been moving on faster than we had, so we were having to get off the hill quicker than we’d have liked. The ski down the Berard glacier was incredible. The snow condition was fantastic. We were able to take lovely lines and both thoroughly enjoyed it!

Towards the end of the skiing section we had to implement everything we had learned & practiced whilst Scottish skiing… Linking as many patches of snow together as possible to descend down the valley – At the point, the quickest thing would be to start walking, but we’d earned our turns, so we were going to take everyone we could!

We made it into the trees, and started walking with crampons. Before long, the head torches were on as well. We arrived in Le Buet village and headed for the train station. Luckily, we had an hour to wait, so we visited a lovely, small bar, full of locals. We enjoyed a well deserved drink before going to catch the train.
As we left, the waitress started singing opera and she was incredible, unfortunately we only caught a minute of it, as we were now running late for the train… (Running late didn’t stop us signing lines from ‘Old Thing Back’ in opera voices).

A truly superb day in the alps doing what we love!

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  1. Eau de Berard Via Ferrate & Climb – Sump To Summit Avatar

    […] drove over to Le Buet. We were really pleased to be back here because this is where we ended our awesome ski tour a few months […]

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