backcountry journal
Mont Fortin - Courmayeur
Feb 2006
I took a helicopter to do this run. It was on the same day as another heli drop onto Aiguille de Glaciers. This is a common two-drop combo on the Italian side of the Mont Banc massif. Heli drops are illegal on the French side which is good for the protection of the Massif but bad as it rules out easy access to some fantastic terrain. That is itself probably a good thing as well.
The flight up to Mont Fortin (2758m) is very short, the quickest heli drop I have done. Perhaps less than a minute. But the drop off point is impressive. I have some footage which I will edit and load onto this page sooner or later. The summit is more of a cirque, a ridge with excellent views across the valley to Mont Blanc. As the heli approached the ridge I really couldn't tell where he was going to land as there wasn't a whole lot of room. He had done it 1000 times before and carefully placed us down right on the edge of the ridge. Helicopters charge by the minute of flight time and if they don't have paying customers in the seat then they take the shortest route to their next landing point in the valley. In this case it meant that the pilot lifted the machine a few meters off the rock and swung it over the edge of the cliff into what must have been a near vertical nose dive directly down the cliff and into the valley. It was pretty impressive. He was going to get another load skiers to bring them to the same run we were about to do. They were at our drop in point pretty quickly so we let them go first. It is unforgivable for a skier to scrape sideways like a scared snowboarder but these guys did just that. Any skier side slipping in powder should have their skis taken off them and be melted down into children's toys. The skis should then be donated to the local municipal ski school. At the expense of them scraping out the snow in the entry couloir, we were able to watch them hit the bowl below and look for any signs of instability. Going first is always a dumb idea.
Editing video footage is a little time intensive at the moment so he only images I have for you at the moment are still shots taken from the film. Since they were bad quality to begin with, I have put them all on one slide and added some notes. Most of the footage is scenic anyway, so you aren't missing out an any ridding action. People always complain about my lack of action shots, but on a good day out I seldom interrupt my riding to take shots of each other riding.
The flight up to Mont Fortin (2758m) is very short, the quickest heli drop I have done. Perhaps less than a minute. But the drop off point is impressive. I have some footage which I will edit and load onto this page sooner or later. The summit is more of a cirque, a ridge with excellent views across the valley to Mont Blanc. As the heli approached the ridge I really couldn't tell where he was going to land as there wasn't a whole lot of room. He had done it 1000 times before and carefully placed us down right on the edge of the ridge. Helicopters charge by the minute of flight time and if they don't have paying customers in the seat then they take the shortest route to their next landing point in the valley. In this case it meant that the pilot lifted the machine a few meters off the rock and swung it over the edge of the cliff into what must have been a near vertical nose dive directly down the cliff and into the valley. It was pretty impressive. He was going to get another load skiers to bring them to the same run we were about to do. They were at our drop in point pretty quickly so we let them go first. It is unforgivable for a skier to scrape sideways like a scared snowboarder but these guys did just that. Any skier side slipping in powder should have their skis taken off them and be melted down into children's toys. The skis should then be donated to the local municipal ski school. At the expense of them scraping out the snow in the entry couloir, we were able to watch them hit the bowl below and look for any signs of instability. Going first is always a dumb idea.
Editing video footage is a little time intensive at the moment so he only images I have for you at the moment are still shots taken from the film. Since they were bad quality to begin with, I have put them all on one slide and added some notes. Most of the footage is scenic anyway, so you aren't missing out an any ridding action. People always complain about my lack of action shots, but on a good day out I seldom interrupt my riding to take shots of each other riding.
In this sequence of shots from the helicopter I have marked our route with red dots. Pic 3 shows the rocky entry chute that caused the other group to slow down so much.
The entry point required a little slip off a cornice and into a rocky area. It wasn't all that steep, nor scary, but I concede that some people may not be familiar with that type of terrain and so very cautious. Once out of the entry chute the line opened up into a very big and very nice bowl of powder. The bowl wasn't very steep, no more than 35 with a concave profile. But it was fast and fun. The skiers had wiggled about a third of the way down the bowl when we dropped in. There were 4 of us, each on a long board of some type. I was riding my Dupraz D1 and the others had swallow tails. It was a short fast celebration of wide open long board riding. A few long radius flying turns, arms arched back above our heads the whole way down and we were at the bottom. The skiers were dots way up the bowl. Skis + wriggly turns in powder = no fun.
After the bowl we had a good step ridge descent into the valley. The weather was a bit warm lower down and snow heavy so it wasn't a highlight. But on it's day this line would be a quality top to bottom fast run.
I have since hiked up into the bowl in late spring and this gave me much better feel for the terrain than taking a heli drop. This entire north facing length of mountain (kind of behind the Courmayeur ski resort) is loaded with good descents. It is also quite well populated with steep grassy avalanche gullies that still had tree-stump ridden unmelted debris in their run out in June. It is worth taking extra care in that area.
After the bowl we had a good step ridge descent into the valley. The weather was a bit warm lower down and snow heavy so it wasn't a highlight. But on it's day this line would be a quality top to bottom fast run.
I have since hiked up into the bowl in late spring and this gave me much better feel for the terrain than taking a heli drop. This entire north facing length of mountain (kind of behind the Courmayeur ski resort) is loaded with good descents. It is also quite well populated with steep grassy avalanche gullies that still had tree-stump ridden unmelted debris in their run out in June. It is worth taking extra care in that area.