Winter finally over (or is it?)

The mountain officially shut on Tuesday 8th May. My last ride was on Monday and what a day. Headed up to the top of the Grande motte glacier, then traveresed and took a short hike round the back to the west face. This starts at an altitude of around 3500mts – guaranteed lung burner when your hiking at this altitude. There had been a good 30-40cm of fresh snow on this face and it hadn’t been ridden. Stability was good but you have to be very careful on this pitch as there are exposed (and hidden) crevasses and seracs to navigate around. The snow was fantastic, dry winter conditions. After the west pitch we then traveresed onto the North face below the main seracs and continued our decent. The decision was then made to continue our tour around the Dome de pramacou. The snow was definitely on the change on the eastern face as we hiked uo, but we caught the North, sheltered face before it had been exposed to the sun and higher temperatures – perfect untracked snow again. This took us all the way to 2100 and Val Claret. Not a bad decent of 1400mts all in Fresh untracked winter snow on the 7th May!