With the first real snowfall of the winter having just arrived it was time to drag the skis and boards out of the cellar and to head back into the mountains. Having checked the snowfall, avalanche report and weather forecast it looked like the upper Rhone Valley was the place to head. With about 1m of snow at 2000m and 40cm of fresh snow having fallen towards the end of last week it was game on.
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| Looking down into the Rhone Valley while on the way up. |
We headed down on Saturday evening with the intention of doing an easy tour on Sunday to get our legs a little bit into the winter mood. Our route was to take us from Oberwald up towards Gale. A pretty safe route as the Avalanche report was giving “treacherous” conditions above 2000m. Once we started skinning up we were surprised to with the quality of the snow. A few times during the day the sun came out and we even got to experience some blue sky. We skinned up to about 2000m, took a break, enjoyed the view and then got our first turns of the season.
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| Skinning up |
The snow on the descent was surprisingly good, unfortunately I had the feeling that my legs had forgotten how to ski. With each turn the feeling slowly started to come back and by the time we were back down in the valley I was looking forward to the next tour already. Usually at this time of year you are bouncing off rocks randomly in turns. We managed to descend back to the valley without a single scratch to the bottom of our skis or boards. Now that’s what I call a win for an early season tour.
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| Turns earned! |
The poor visibility, fog and snow on the north side of the Alps after going through the Furka tunnel convinced us that we had made the right choice. Roll on the next snowfall and some more days in perfect snow.
