Following on from the AGM and Annual Dinner, the FIRST time ever for this event to be held outside of the UK, 12 slightly worse for wear guides gathered at the Grands Montets for 2 days of Continuous Professional Development training. The CPD is a requirement to retain the qualification, but since many of us opt to take a ski course , it's hardly a chore.

Splitting into 2 groups, we covered 3 subjects over the 2 days of training. The newly elected Training Officer, Terry Ralphs, hosted a workshop on Glacier Travel and Crevasse Rescue. In early season, this is a subject never far from the back of our minds, and the resulting discussions and technical sessions provided many different approaches to this important issue. Ski guiding in particular is a very solitary profession, so an opportunity to share techniques is always welcome. Here we see Steve setting up a crossed ski belay while Dave and Terry look on.

On the second day, we were given an excellent presentation and training session on avalanche transceivers by Louis Piguet, an IFMGA Guide from Leysin in nearby Switzerland, who is also the after sales service rep for Mammut. Louis gave us an excellent overview on transceivers in general and then concentrated on the benefits of the Mammut Pulse, which many of us use. Having an expert there enabled us to get the most out of this powerful device.

But the highlight of the training was of course the skiing. Alison Culshaw of the British Alpine Ski School in Chamonix gave 2 half day sessions for the 2 groups of guides. In spite of shocking visibility, especially on day 2, we all felt we got a massive amount out of this training, delivered in a lively style by Alison, a former member of the Scottish ski team. Loads of subtle tricks and techniques both for our own skiing and the coaching of clients off piste, looking at edging and pressure especially. We think we have a reasonable handle on these basic elements, and then we get shown a whole new dimension. Great stuff...

So this season we'll all be skiing gods - thanks Alison!

It's the snowiest winter for decades, according to the locals. Bring it on!

On the way back from Colorado to Chamonix, I stopped off at Lowe Alpine UK for a meeting with the team there to chat through the latest in product development.

Quite often, folk will ask me if I’m sponsored by Lowe Alpine; to be honest that depends on your interpretation of “sponsored”. To me, being sponsored implies being paid to wear the kit with very little other responsibilities, and sometimes just a matter of displaying the logo of the sponsor.

My relationship with Lowe Alpine is very different to that. It started in the 90’s when I was presenting the BMC Winter Lecture Series, with the event being supported by Lowe Alpine. At the end of the first series, Martyn Hurn (then marketing manager) gave me a jacket. A couple of months later, I sent him a report on its performance , and he sent me another jacket and a pack, and so it went on.

Fifteen years later, I am now a technical consultant for Lowe Alpine – it’s a job, reporting on performance of kit, advising on designs, and above all subjecting kit to wear tests in an accelerated time scale, using and abusing it beyond all that’s reasonable to see how it stands up.

The clothing team is based at Lowe Alpine International in Italy, and I liaise with Claudio and his team by email on a regular basis. The pack team is still in Kendal, now headed up by Matryn Hurn, and I get to see them to discuss development when I’m over there for the Kendal Mountain Festival. Together with the UK sales team , Andy Cave and I looked at the clothing range for Fall Winter 2009/2010 as well.

So in reality it’s a job, contributing to product development rather than being a sponsored hero.

GOOD NEWS!

It's thumping with snow at valley level here, and my TWO new pairs of skis are sitting in the cellar waiting for the right moment. The grapevine says 1 meter at 1500m, but even if that's a tourist forecast, 50cm at this time of year will certainly be a very good start.

BRING ON WINTER!!!

The pattern of last year is now repeating, thanks to the snowfall reported in the last blog post followed by a couple of freeze thaw cycles and now settled weather for a few days.

The Droites and the Jorasses are in very good condition indeed, with recent ascents of the Shroud on the Jorasses and the North face of the Matterhorn being reported.

October is a wicked month for alpinism and climbing generally în Chamonix. Check it out some time! Or maybe just leave the Guides to enjoy their holidays....

Last year, October was a great month for alpinism with steady settled weather right the way through. The Jorasses in particular got a hammering as folk ran up things like the McIntyre Colton.

I was big walling in the States last year so missed all the fun. I was really looking forward to staying at home, saving some carbon and doing some Alpinism, but winter has arrived early! We have 10cm of fresh here at 1140m, so winter has most definitely arrived. The weather lore experts here all predict a cold spell from now on - lots of myrtilles this autumn, the size of the potatoes in Lavancher (seriously!) - whether it's wishful thinking or based on aeons of tradition, we can all start to get excited about the ski season.

I’ve just finished off the summer with an ascent of Mont Blanc by the Gouter route, and then a quick trip up the Gran Paradiso. Mont Blanc is often climbed by folk with woefully inadequate kit, poor acclimatisation and rope techniques that range from the slightly unconventional to the downright dangerous. Check out this outrageous piece of video footage on youtube in the Grand Couloir! In previous years the Gran Paradiso has been mercifully free of this kind of behaviour, but clearly the habit is spreading.

One tries to avoid stereotyping or generalisations, but empirical observation tells me that much of this incompetence comes from climbers from the eastern bloc, notably Poland and the Czech Republic.

In July I was descending the north face of the Mont Blanc du Tacul at about 3 in the afternoon. It had been a long day on the traverse to Mont Blanc, and I was aware of feeling that we were a bit late to be descending. On the way down, we met a couple with HUGE sack, plodding painfully slowly up. It didn’t look like fun. “We are from Czech Republic. How far to the Col Maudit?” They were planning to camp up there. The next morning the chopper came in and lifted 2 folk off. Poor acclimatisation? Sacks too heavy? Poor timing?

In mid August I was on the Gouter route, and we came across a Polish man above the Gouter with crampons but no ice axe, no harness and no rope. It was quite a windy day and I was more worried about him being blown off the summit ridge than going down a slot, though the Dome de Gouter does have a few sizeable holes. We saw him on the summit later, either oblivious of or ignoring the risks.

The final straw that prompted me to blog this was an incident on the Gran Paradiso in late August. We were followed up the dry part of the glacier by a young lad, no ice axe, no harness, no rope, and this time with just instep crampons tied on with very old canvas straps. As we arrived at the more crevassed part of the route from the Chabod hut, the snow coverage was enough to warrant putting the rope on. Once again I spoke to the lad, found out he was Polish, and that at just 18 years old he was planning to follow people to the top.

After my lecture, he hesitated for 10 minutes, then followed the next team across fragile bridges above yawning crevasses that I’d been nervous on WITH a rope.

What is it with these people? Do they think we wear harnesses and ropes just to look good? Admittedly when I was a young alpinist, I did some pretty stupid things along these lines, but that’s because no-one had told me. When someone tells you there are crevasses, and then you see them with your own eyes, then it ceases to be ignorance of the risk and becomes stubborn stupidity. Then again, is it just Darwinian selection going on?

The best thing would be if the mountaineering associations in the eastern bloc could promote safety and good practice, like the excellent safety lectures organised by the BMC in England and Wales.

Think I'll get off my soapbox now and have a beer.....

July means hot weather, dry glaciers, firm snow and no avalanche risk? Wrong!

Richard, Oli and I ahve just spent the last few days acclimatising for Mont Blanc. On day 1 I called Laurence, the ever helpful gardienne of the Cosmiques hut, to ask how much snow they had received during Friday's storms. "Welcome to the winter version of the Cosmiques!" was her wry reply, and then told me I had better bring snowshoes to make our planned crossing of the Vallée Blanche from the Torino hut on the following day.They were very useful to scoot across from the Torino to the neaby Aiguille du Thoule on the first day, and we certainly felt extremely smug while skimming across the surface of the VB to the Cosmiques, climbing the Pointe Lachenal on the way.

The bad news when we arrived there was that 3 hours of being bombarded by lightning on the Friday had fried parts of the hut's electricity supply, but the crew were coping admirably under the circumstances. The good news was that the slopes of the Mont Blanc du Tacul had been tested by 30 people already, and the key slope of the Mont Maudit, a well known avalanche spot, had released spontaneously that morning.

You can clearly see the crown walls of the slab which has popped out: 30cm to 2m in depth, and a total of 300m in length. That's a fair amount of snow. The track which we put in the next day goes straight through the right hand pair of crown walls, with a short section of unreleased soft slab between the upper crwon wall and the bergschrund, which we pitched up rather than moving together.

It's always satisfying to effectively manage a risk in the mountains, even if it's slightly unexpected. When the mountain gods offer a lesson, it's best to take them up on it....

April 2008 was a very interesting experience for me, not only in terms of the new places visited and the demands of the poor weather, but also the necessity to navigate to a high degree of accuracy in little or no visibility on a frequent basis. Thanks to Adam Wainwright for the photo from yet another white out day in the Silvretta!

The map came out every day, just to work out which col to go over, even when we could see.

The compass was out almost every day as we were frequently in white out. I often found myself snowploughing on a bearing for 50 to 100 meters, stopping, taking a back bearing on the vague outlines of the group in the mist behind, and then having them ski directly to me before repeating the process. It's slow and tedious, but keeps me on the bearing and gives the group a visual frame of reference to ski with.

The altimeter on my watch was used most days too, as it's difficult to keep track of distance otherwise, particularly when skiing downhill. With frequent recalibration at known points such as cols or buildings, we were kept on track and when necessary I could pinpoint our position to within 50 meters at any time.

I used the GPS as a validation of that technique rather than as a first line of attack. I think it's an important distinction, as there can be a temptation to rely on the electronic box of tricks, and forget traditional navigation. This is a dangerous attitude for 2 reasons:

• What happens if the GPS batteries run out and you've not been keeping an eye on your position on the map?
• There's a tendency to ski along with your eyes on the screen instead of looking around for landmarks, crevasses, avalanche slopes etc.

On one quite bad day, I was asked by another team of ski tourers if I thought it was safe to cross over to the next valley. I replied that it would be, providing they had the physical strength to trail break in the deep snow, and could navigate accurately. Their reply was "oh, it's OK - we have a GPS". That's NOT what I said, I thought to myself, but restrained myself from making a comment.

In the words of Martin Epp, a legendary Swiss guide:
"We use GPS to get out of ze bullshit, not to get into ze bullshit"

......now the rain has gone. I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It's gonna be a bright, bright sunshinin' day.

Anyone ski touring during the month of April may recognise a certain degree of irony in this blog post header, and anyone apart from the team skiing with me last week in the Silvretta may wonder what a Jimmy Cliff song is doing there. To answer this latter point first, on the 1 good day last week, we were skiing off piste and caught a few tracks of main man Jimmy, playing live next to the piste in Samnaun.

Jimmy clearly has NOT been skiing with me for the last month. The weather for April has been fairly challenging - cloud, snow, rain have been a constant feature. Navigation with altimeter and compass has been an almost daily ritual, and the GPS has made a few appearances too. with all the fresh snow, some fine judgements on the avalanche front have been called for as well. It's almost as if the mountain gods are making us pay for April 2007, when every day was bright blue sky, frozen hard in the morning, spring snow at 11, slush by midday and beers on the terrace in the sun by 1.

April 2008 couldn't have been a greater contrast. It started for me with a traverse from Simplon to St Gotthard, south of the more popular Tour de Soleil, with a strong group from the Eagle Ski Club. Just a few hours into the trip, we were in a cairngorm blizzard on a col which showed nothing special on the map but turned out to steep terrain with chains and ladders, followed by a ski down in zero visibility on horrendous breakable crust, with poles stowed, a compass in one hand and the GPS in the other. That kind of set the tone for the rest of the week: exploring new areas is one of the great delights of guiding, but when you can see nothing but grey, it can pall a bit. One of the days we had to drop right down to 1200m to avoid an avalanche prone col, so had to walk up a road for 400m to the hut, fortunately with a great welcome and one of the best hut meals I've ever had. I think the guardian could see we needed physical and moral support as well as a thorough drying out!
Click here for a photo gallery of this great adventure with a fine team of ski mountaineers.

A tour around the Otztal followed, again the first time in this area for me, and with some very interesting navigation, especially over the col where Ötzi the Ice Man was found. It's no surprise he got lost up there and froze to death. No GPS technolgy in 3300BC to help you out... Once again, the welcome in the huts more than made up for the intermedaite weather and difficult snow conditions. Huts with private rooms, some of the best pasta and tiramisu in existence, free showers....even a sauna! Marvellous.

The second half of April was spent in Silvretta, trying to repeat the success of last years trip, and get up Piz Buin as well. Both teams managed that, but both times in terrible weather, a testament to their determination and fortitude! The first trip started and finshed in the vilage of Scuol to the south of the massif in the Engadine, with a mellow finish from the Tuoi hut. Quite a bit of poor weather but some quality snow which deserved (and got) some quality skiing from the team.

A final week started well with Jimmy, but after the first day, the weather was unremittingly poor - trail breaking in calf to knee deep snow and snowploughing on a compass bearing can lose its charm after a while! Once again, the quality of the team, put together by John Stafford, made the whole experience a great adventure, and climbing Piz Buin in Scottish rime conditions was a great buzz. The gnomes in the Montafon where we finished this 4 week stint were top notch too.

Auf wiedersehen, aund bis dem nächsten Mal in Österreich!