Mont Velan und Dent d’ Herens, Mai 25

Mont Velan, located east of the Great Saint Bernard Pass, resembles a fortress: steep on all sides, inaccessible, crisscrossed by steep couloirs and rocky ridges. Only the standard route offers ambitious ski tourers a relatively easy ascent (apart from the Col de la Gouille crossing). We chose not the easiest, but the most direct route up the Couloir Central and took the enjoyable standard route for the descent.

That same day, we crossed to the Italian side of Valpelline. The next day, with food and a gas stove in our backpacks, we set off on the long trek from Place Moulin to the Rifugio d’Aosta. Since there were only seven ski mountaineers in its winter room, the night was comfortable and quiet. Only the strong north wind and the cloud cover on the summit of the Dent d’Herens worried me. Fortunately, the current had subsided overnight as we headed toward the summit flank at dawn. This slope has an average gradient of 45 degrees, but was perfectly snowed in. After painstaking trail-making, we reached the summit at 11:00 a.m. Now it was time to concentrate fully on the descent over the extremely exposed and snow-covered summit ridge and back down the slope to the ski depot. We mastered this too and thoroughly enjoyed the downhill variant over the Glacier des Grandes Murailles – I’ve rarely experienced such perfect firn! Congratulations also to my guest René!