Sachette Couloir

Wayne Watson at the exit to the main couloir into the Sachette. Below us are another 100 metres of roughly the same gradient.

Today, in exchange for the baby sitting I've been doing for his girls, Wayne offered me a free morning's skiing, and then proceeded to scare the crap out of me by leading us to big steep slopes of compressed, chalky snow. We skied the Borsat North, the big Sachette couloir, and then warmed down with the steep Familial slope under the Tommeuses chair.

When you ski steep powder slopes you worry about avalanches. But if you fall you just plop down in the snow and then dig yourself out of the hole you've created. The gradient and size of the slopes is therefore much less daunting than when the snow is hard packed, as it is at the moment. Now a fall on big steep slopes can be potentially hazardous, for if you don't self arrest quickly you may rag-doll-tumble at an ever increasing velocity.

For seasoned ski mountaineers the Sachette couloir probably looks like a nursery slope. But for those of us relatively new to steep(ish) skiing it's a daunting proposition. And when your guide says 'stay on your feet' and then proceeds gingerly himself, you know you'd better pay attention to your movements.

Your legs are committed to the slope, and they seek turning guidance from the brain, and they beg 'Please help us to ski this properly, please help us stay upright'.
But the brain knows best and it says to the legs 'What are you doing? I'm not allowing you to go down there, you must be out of your mind'.
And the legs say 'No, we're in your mind. We need your help'

By which point it's too late, you've lost the mental battle, and you find yourself in survival mode, muscles tensed, heart pounding. And then you get halfway down and it doesn't seem that bad and you make a couple of turns which are half decent.

In the afternoon I skied the Borsat North a couple of times on my own, for the practice. You get used to it. Apparently.