A long day ski-touring in the Ecrins to the Le Col du Clot des Cavales with a great team

A friend who I do some mild, less extreme (steeps) touring with (she has another team for that), suggested a tour that she's always been keen to do, but it's long with a boot-packing approach from the valley floor up an old glacier to a Col at 3,158m so roughly 1,550 elevation.

Because of the warm (hot) weather, she suggested a 06:15 departure, and we arrived at the Villar D'Arene parking along from La Grave at 06:50; the parking was already rammed, so much for it being the end of the season!

That said, it wasn't too busy as many of the vehicle occupiers were already up at high altitudes staying in the numerous refuges up there, and we saw innumerable dudes tooled up for some serious alpinism.

In the image below are circa six refuges, our Col sort of bottom left Le Col du Clot des Cavales

 

The first couple of km, we walked in trainers and then put the boots on and hiked up the cold icy path with snow cover coming and going depending on the aspect, then it was on with the skis and crampons for a very steep hike up to the valley plateau and then on to the Refuge d'Alpe Villar-d'Arêne, where we dropped a bit of a clanger by not taking a lower route, so off with the skins and then a ski down loosing 100m of elevation.

I always knew it was going to be a tough day, as I suspected I would be the weakest (oldest) of the team, the other male was my mate Rolf a stupidly fit Swede, who often does a morning ski-tour, then comes back to do 40km+ cross country or at this time of the year, on the bike.

Josephine is a La Grave Goddess, having been married to a LG guide and I've known since 97 and have done a fair few tours with, a mate of hers tagged along, another Amazonian skier, who Jojo described as a strong Alpiniste who telemarks and come to the first ascent she shot off with Rolf in pursuit and that's when I very soon thought I was in for a long day.

 

 

What I was also paranoid about was the heat; as I go to pieces in hot temps, I was carrying 2 litres of liquid, 1.5 in a bladder and a 500 compression bottle on my pack strap. I'd had a good breakfast and was carrying Harribous and Snickers.

It was a long skin up the valley floor, and then a fecker of a traverse which was not necessary, and then the real climbing started around 2,300m, so still 850m of climbing, and by then, it was getting hot.

The surrounding mountains and glaciers were awesome, and where I was a little worried about it being tracked out, it was soon obvious where we were heading. It was good: Le Col du Clot des Cavales 3,158m.

At around 2,800m Isa started dropping off the back, and we were all suffering but she was not good, every now and again, a slight breeze would blow and it was amazing the difference it made to me, but the final 150m above 3,000 showed that we were not use to that altitude with even Jojo and Rolf having to take breaks.

Once at the Col the views were stunning down into Berade valley, Isa came in very tired 30mins after us.

 

 

Quick change of headgear and t-shirt at the top.

 

 

On the ascent, it was obvious we'd have to choose our lines very carefully as the snow-pack changed tremendously within just a few degrees, and in the end we all went our separate ways with Rolf hoping to chase cold snow over in the shade on the glacier side.

We came together and then watched Rolf arrive over a band of cliffs with no real way out, as he started to backtrack out we could see a possible route to ski out, with Jojo shouting at him the necessary directions, and that was mildly amusing, but he's very strong and not phased.

 

 

Once all together, it was a dream to see Isa telemark; at times, she skied and looked like she was on alpine skis and then would put beautiful sweeping turns in.

On the way up we spotted a couple of untracked faces on the side of the moraines and I was first to drop in, setting a wet slide off, so I quickly skied out to the side and let the face go before skiing back down across it, meanwhile, a group going up the Refuge Pave were busily filming me, hoping to get some good social media content.

We skied down from that notch (col) to the right of the rock peaks.

 

 

Once back to the flat of the valley floor the runout was extremely arduous in the sticky snow, luckily we could fill our bottles up.

 

And then the final pitch on skis was not good, where we climbed up first thing using crampons, was now slush and not helped by the large numbers of people going up to spend the night in the various refuges.

 

 

Then it was the 2km hike back to the parking picking up our trainers we'd left, by then I was on auto-pilot walking in a daze, but the thought of potential beers later up at Freds at the Lautaret was what kept me going, image at the top of the page.

Final stats:
Elapsed time 09:16
1650m elevation
25km
Av HR 123

And four buffs :)

And one slight incident - Rolf face-planted when skinning down a slight descent, which is always tricky, but it was rutted and icy, and when I saw him go, I went very carefully!