Haut Giffre - Cornes de Loriaz
Outing date: 2013-01-18
Altitude of access point: 1350m
Maximum altitude: 2600m
Elevation gain/loss: +1250m
Snow depth at 1350m: 50cm
Snow depth at 2700m: 210cm with 70cm of powder or compacted/winded snow
Weather: sunny in the morning and cloudy in the afternoon
Departure/arrival time: 08:30/16:30
For this outing the departure point was again from the village of Le Buet (Haute-Savoie) next to Vallorcine. I was back in the Haut Giffre range to ride the North chute of Cornes de Loriaz. With Olivier we started to hike at 8:30. We didn't take the 4x4 way for the first part of the ascent. We took the snowshoes path which joins Trè les Eaux and Bérard valleys. It was a bit longer but was worth making the detour... the ambiance was magic in the forest.
This place hides some beautiful little chalets...
... arriving at 2000m on the plateau we could see that some tracks were going in direction to the Terrasse path but nobody seemed to have gone to the Cornes de Loriaz... that was a good and a bad new at the same time, meaning we would have a virgin chute to ride but also an ascent without any track.
We were effectively the first to come here since the last snowfall. As the snow was very soft and deep in the chute we decided to keep the skins as long as possible doing difficult conversions in the narrow and steep face... then it was time to put the crampons and to climb. According to the snow depth, it was more swimming than climbing!
Despite of big efforts we never reached the top of the chute... we spent more than 2 hours swimming in the deep powder and we stopped just 50 meters under the summit. It was late and we found reasonable to start coming down from this point.
The snow was really good in all the face. It was a memorable ride.
The second part of the descent in the forest was also delightful, the snow was perfect from the top to the bottom!