Yurp January ski tour - Leysin, CH 2006

To cut the story short, I should really start to do something with my life and get my MSc papers out from the school. So my studies are nearly done and I should prolly start my MSc thesis next autumn, so I sort of have the spring more or less free. Hence I applied for an exchange program to study the spring semester abroad. Sadly my skills in German, Italy and French are very limited so I could not apply for all the cool schools in the Alps. In the end I got a place to study in the Netherlands, and lucky for me the studies there start at the beginning of February. So I have the January to play around in the Alps and in Yurp in general.


So after everything was set, I made a few phone calls and wrote some emails for a place to ski and some company to ski with.


I started my tourneé in Leysin, Switzerland as a guest of TeleAl. So naturally the first part of my tour is Leysin.


The weather has been really nice, sunshine but sadly no new snow. I spent a week skiing at Leysin, some of the time on piste and sometimes offpiste. I also did some touring, basicly just skinning up the slope for the excersice and then skiing down. Most of the skiing on and off-piste was pretty laid back, as neither me nor Al was in a hurry. We did do a really nice real tour to the top of Pic Chaussy from Les Mosses, roughly 900 m of vert gain. In the beginning we were planning on skiing back down roughly the same way we skinned up, but Serge our picked a better way down. In the end we skied down the NW-couloir, getting into the couloir was a bit tricky but nothing that bad. The snow wasn't that great either, especially when taking into account that the couloir was pretty steep and lower down pretty narrow. After the proper couloir ended, we skied on pastry fields in really good powdery snow. In the end the total descent was about 1000 m of vertical, with the majority of the skiing the the couloir proper.


We also tried to do Les Diableret's proper, a nice roughly 2 h glacier tour, but got cold feet at the beginning as the weather seemed to change. After checking the weather at our estimated top-out time, it was a complete whiteout so we made the right decision to bail out. Ended up skiing freshies on Glacier 3000 and ended the day in Refuge L'Espace, before taking the last telecabins down. My last skiing day was Tuesday, and it was snowing the whole time. Ended up clocking around 8500 m of vert of freshies on that day alone. In the end, I ended up skinning the slopes two times, and then doing the Pic Chaussy NW-couloir. The rest of the time I spent using the lifts.


All in all, Leysin offers some pretty nice skiing, and when taking into account all the neighbouring areas, it can produce some really nice skiing and touring. To top all things, Al was a really great and generous host. So muchos gracias to Al for showing me around Leysin and generally being a really cool guy.

The W-face of Tour d'Ai, just next to the piste has tons of good bolted climbing on it.


Geneve, Lausanne and basicly everything next to Lake Geneve is often in the clouds, unlike Leysin.


Cloe and Al on the lift.


Looking at a couloir, Al and I skied, from above.


And here's another prespective to the same couloir.


A small panorama from the Solepraz-lift, Cloa and Al on the first chair in the pic.


Al posing in front of the house, after a nice day of skiing.


A view from the courtyard towards Pic Chaussy.


Al skinning up the old piste on Pic Chaussy.


And Serge blasting up, near the lake. Still climbing on Pi Chaussy.


And still skinning, though now almost at the top.


Serge and Al enjoying the sunshine and some snacks at the top.


A panorama looking Westwards from the top.


Al skiing in the biggest N-facing couloir.


Al still flying on the narrow part.


And this is how the line looked from below. We skied the prominent rightwards slanting couloir in the center of the pic.


Another view of the line, infact the couloir we skied is hiding in the shadow of the ridge.


A panorama, somewhat below Refugio d'Maien. On the left is Tour d'Ai and in the center Tour d'Maien.


The S-edge of Les Diablarets glacier.


Me skiing below the "knob" in the whiteout.


And Al enjoying the fresh snow...


Al still having fun.


Still snowing the next morning. Time to take out the big guns, Big Daddies.


A few of the lines I skied...


Another line.


A funny sign, must be 'cause there are a lot of 'mericans here skiing (Leysin American Highschool).


Photos by me and Al