Day 3 - Back-country ski trip from the i Re Magi Refuge to the Col du Mont Thabon

Back country skiing Biancon Feb 17 to 22
Sunday Feb 20
Well dawn broke at the i re Magi refuge with a surprise heavy snow fall around the refuge. We now planned to spend 2 nights at the i Re Magi.

Today (Sunday) we will complete the planned day trip over the Col de la Vallee-l'Echelle to the Mont Thabon refuge despite the snow.

We have decided not to return to Nevache village via the Col des Muandes 2828 meters on Monday. Fritz's investigation from local information suggested this route would be harder and 2 hours longer than our trip yesterday (day 2 - Saturday). Our modified plan for Monday is to return to Nevache via the lower Col l'Echelle at only 1762 meters. The Refuse Manager, Francesca, has decided to climb the Col l'Echelle with us. Her home area is around Naples where her summer job is as a Mountain guide.

After a good breakfast Fritz and I set out in the snow for the Col de la Vallee-Etoite at 2526 meters. We skied back along the road that we can down yesterday over-taking a group of snow-shoers at the top of the first climb. We past the sign post at the track junction and this time continued north to cross the river on the Pont de la Fonderie (1897 meters) over the river Ruisseau de Vallee Etoite. We spent some time here taking photos and the Snow-shoers caught up to us. As we were following fresh ski tracks we had to work a little hard to get ahead of them again. The snow shoe tracks are no good to follow on skis. The ski tracks we were following where those of a group which left the Refuge 1 hour before us. They had to cross the Col de la Vallee-Etoite to catch a train at the larger town of Modane. Modane is about 12 km after crossing the Col.

We climbed steadily for about 1 km and reached a height of 2188 meters where we dropped down to cross a creek and then climbed steadily for about 2 km to 2326 meters. At this point the weather was turning with a stong wind and wet snow. Visibility was down to 3-5 meters in front and the ski trail was very difficult to follow. We were about 1 km from the Col but still needed to climb 200 meters. Fritz called a stop and had no opposition. We turned back and headed back down.

The snow was excellent and skiing should have been great but, as this was a fresh fall it was "just" covering large limestone rocks. As soon as we start to ski we would crash (audibly) into these rocks with the usual results. Skiing remained like this until we were almost back to the river were we had a very nice 1 km run back to the bridge. Life wasn't meant to be easy.

On our way up earlier in the day we had seen a side trail to the Verde Lac and Fritz though this would be a nice place to have lunch so, on our return we took the trail. The trail descended to a bridge and then went vertically up a steep slope. The snow-shoers had no problem here but we did. There appeared to be an easier trail at a lower traverse and we cut that way for a while. We could not find the lake even after going almost all the way around the ridge. We finally went back to the original slope, took out skies off and walked up the steep slope. "Surprisingly" we ended up at a viewing point for the Lake. Not satisfied Fritz plugged steps down to the lake and we finally decided that it wasn't a very good lunch spot or a very good lake for that matter. We returned to the i re Magi refuge for lunch. A much more pleasant place.

Fritz went for a short afternoon ski on his own and took my Karhu Guide skis to try them out. He is now a convert and tried to get me to sell them to him.