Big day in Saint Foy

Wayne knocked on my door at 7.25am.
"Do you want to come to Saint Foy this morning?"
"You're skiing the Foglietta?" I asked, bleary eyed.
"No, that's all tracked out, we're doing something else"
"OK"
"Great, be ready in 40 minutes"

The 'something else' turned out to be a two hour wind blasted hike of 600 vertical meters up to the Arete de Montseti, which is on the opposite side of the valley to the Foglietta's north face. This was fine by me as I had intended on a long walk today, to counteract the copious amounts of spaghetti that I've been consuming.

It was my first trip to St. Foy, and the ambience was stunning. There are some big, big slopes up there, and the almost total lack of human intervention (away from the resort itself) gives the area a wild and natural flavor. What you might call, the back country. Aside from a couple of other touring groups we were completely on our own. I wonder what it will look like in ten years time.

We skied down over the other side to our ascent, to a vast alluvial plain. The snow was mostly excellent powder, but surprisingly a lot of people had been this way in previous days, and so we had to choose our way carefully to find clean snow.

From this valley floor it was a long descent on the mountain road, which had become very (and I mean very) icy due to the lack of snow. We gingerly snow ploughed our way down, thigh muscles burning. When there is snow on this road it must be a lovely cruise as it winds it's way towards Le Crot, following the Torrent de la Sassiere. We passed through isolated hamlets, deserted now, but homes to farmers and walkers during the summer; crossed half frozen streams and ended below the tree line. You could say it was alpine glory with Alpine Experience (I should be in advertising)

Check out Jean Ribart's (who is 69 years old, by the way, and an inspiration to us youngsters) pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jean.ribart/20102011ValPhotosOfTheDay#

and check out the map here:
http://www.trailbehind.com/Foglietta%20(Pointe%20de%20la)/

Photo by Jean Ribart: not quite the summit, but far enough.