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Don’t let the harnesses, transceivers or crevasses put you off. The Vallee of Blanche is something that should be on every serious skiers bucket list. After taking the two the Aiguille du Midi lifts to a height of about 3,800 meters and making one hell of a hair raising traverse (see below) you have 22 – 17 kilometres of continuous skiing ahead of you, depending on what route you take. The height of 3,800 meters gives you about 2800 meters of vertical meters of skiing.

These pictures do the Vallee no justice at all, there is no concept of scale. The place is truly something to admire, so white, so big, so perfect.

Northish facing view of France and Geneva (Mont Blanc to the left) from the top of Aiguille du Midi lookout at 3880 meters.

Above is the hair raising 300 meter traverse down the ridge from the lift. We were all daisy chained together and wearing climbing harnesses. At this point the guide at a cost of 70 Euro was looking like a pretty good deal. Once again this photo doesn’t really do the traverse any justice, it may not look to steep either side of the path, but believe me it was.

The start of our 17 km ski down the Vallee. We were taken on the “Big Kidney” route. As a general rule, when you ski down the further left you are the harder the skiing.

Pausing for a breather after our first proper fresh tracks. Not easy work at all, there was just sooo much snow.

At the base of the Giants Glacier, although big probably not all that friendly.

A view from the cat track back into Chamonix Village.

Don’t worry when you do finally make it to the bottom there is a perfectly positioned pub to reminisce and drink your aches and pains away.

Note: Images were taken using a point and shoot Nikon Coolpix S3 and stitched together using the plug-in Image Composite Editor in Live Photo Gallery.