CLIMB SKILLS
›WHY:
CLIMBERS SHOULD SKI
Skiing is the Achilles’ heel of British alpinists. But Chamonix resident Charlie Boscoe has three great reasons why you need to learn to ski this winter.
G
ive that climbing and skiing are such similar activities; it always seems rather strange how they are viewed as completely separate by many in the British mountain community. After all, both require you to look after yourself and get yourself around the mountains – all that really differs is the mode of transport. They are essentially one and the same, and mountain people know it. If you went back a 100 years and talked to a hill farmer in the Alps, they wouldn’t look down on one activity or the other; each is necessary in its given season. Similarly, if you aspire to be a mountain guide, you need to be
both a climber and a skier. It’s easy to imagine skiing as something people do when they don’t have the stomach for winter climbing but, whether it you use it as a separate activity or as a way of getting to your route, the reality is that skiing is part of becoming a good all-round mountaineer. It might not immediately appear to be as gnarly as trad routes or alpine north faces, but the reality is that skiing has all the variety of climbing and might even be (whisper it quietly!) pretty hardcore itself. The fi rst reason to learn to ski is if you want to climb alpine routes in the winter.
38 | 70TH ANNIVERSARY | FOR BRITISH CLIMBING AND WALKING SINCE 1944
I’ve seen plenty of climbers (and they are almost always Brits!) wading through deep snow at the top of the Aiguille du Midi aiming for a route, and it’s hard to imagine why they felt that swimming through powder was easier than learning the basic skills required to ski through it. To get to the Pellisier Gully on the Pointes Lachenal from the Midi takes about an hour of walking on fi rm snow, about four hours trudging through powder, and three or four minutes on skis. Ditto the North Face of Les Droites, all of the routes on Mont Blanc du Tacul, and many others.
Plenty of climbers haven’t liked learning to ski, and might not even enjoy the skiing itself, but even basic skills will set you on your way to getting much more done with a lot less effort. Imagine catching the fi rst lift up, skiing into a route, climbing it and then abbing down, and then skiing out to
PHOTO: A. BUCHET.
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