Searching for a big face on a large mountain, we found the Balmhorn, smack dab in the middle of the Bern-Valais border I love to ski. Though I wanted to ski more spring snow, we decided to go here because of the strong Foehn forecasted. Spring snow would probably remain frozen all day (it was), but powder at altitude is still good. I’ve wanted to ski this face for years, so it was a blast for me to finally get on it! On the map, it looks steep, rolling off the flat summit towards the elbow of the Schwarzgeltscher. It’s a good long climb of 1800 meters from Spittelmatte, and good steep skiing on a north face. This climb can be a bit technical, requiring some crampon use on the upper glacier, and ski crampons, after the freeze/thaw cycles in spring. We got to use all of our cool alpine gear, making it a proper alpine, ski mountaineering summit, in a day. And the ski descent was superb!

April snows will certainly add the alpine snowpack, creating great conditions for alpine ski ascents like these this Spring. We will climb some of these peaks in a day, and others over two days. People should be able to skin for 4-6 hours and be comfortable skiing down steep slopes. Send me a note if you would like to join in fun. Prices will start at around SFr.170.00. Details can be found on the new page I have created for Alpine Ski Mountaineering.

After a superb break from skiing, I did a couple of couloirs from the Argentiere Basin in the Chamonix valley with Chris and Pat. We did the Couloir Chevalier, which we thought would be a warm up to the Barbey on the Swiss side of the Aiguille d’Argentiere. It turned out to be the steeper one in fantastic powder conditions. We awoke at 3AM this morning to climb the Aiguille d’Argentiere. Four and a half hours later, we were standing on the summit, basking in the morning sun. The snow conditions in the Barbey were not as good. Some old tracks created inconsistent snow. But it was a nice challenge. We skied it all the way done to Saleina on the Swiss side, making for a super fun traverse France-Switzerland.