Here's and in-depth look at one of Chamonix's most famous off-pistes, Le Pas de Chevre. You'll need a ticket all the way to the top of Les Grands Montets, and a ticket down from the Montenvers train...just ask at the info points. I'd also recommend going with a guide or someone who's done it before, although always check the weather (must be 100% clear for the top parts and the glacier bit), and avalanche conditions, although these are always dangerous, whatever the weather.

But not with the Pas de Chevre. Not yet anyway. Just due to the situation of the off-piste, this is not for the traditional tourist. You need equipment (although I forgot my shovel and my beeper when I went there...ooops), and someone who knows the terrain. No signs, no borders. Take a wrong turn and you end up in the 2 metre wide 60 degree Couloir Poubelle...and die.

The "piste" begins off the top of the Grands Montets Cable car. Once you've gone down the hundred or so steps you turn right, go under the ropes and signs warning you of certain death if you go beyond this point, and head off the (deceptively) shallow slopes of the beginning of the Pas de Chevre.

The area is incredibly picturesque, and you feel completely dwarfed by the Drus and the Aiguille Verte, which seem so overwhelming you feel you could touch them. Here there is no one. The snow has not been touched since the last pack of snow fell, the area is silent. You glide effortlessly (-ish depends) through the powder and are overcome with happiness. This is the way skiing was meant to be (*sigh*).

After 300 metres or so, the ground steepens as you enter a large bowl. This is avalanche territory (especially in late May when we did it). You have to be careful not to set off an avalanche, especially if someone is under you. The snow can also be deceptive and hide large sheets of ice (the week before, a friend of Phil's had a bad encounter with one of those and had to be helicoptered off...), and a fall could send you tumbling down to a large piece of rock, smashing your head to smitherines in the process. No mistakes allowed.

Anyway as you progress down, the slope becomes steeper, and the bowl narrows to a couloir, until it reaches a width of 3 metres maximum. If you've never learned how to do a jump turn, it's now or never! You can then follow the couloir, or just hop into another one (there are some junctions). Once you've gone down the couloirs, you find yourself in a new bowl and you must take a hard left, and do quite a lot of traversing. From here on the trail is very hard to find, and you musn't get it wrong, or you find yourself face to face with a 100-200 metre drop down to the Mer de Glace glacier...ouch.

There is one passage, where you can ski down (steep-ish), and find yourself on the Mer de Glace Glacier, from which you can see the Montenvers Train, which you have to join, in order to go back down. That's right folks, you don't go down the same way you came up, you need to take the Montenvers Train, since you're on the other side of the Glacier. Needless to say, you need to be careful on the Mer de Glace, since it contains some of the deepest crevasses of any glacier in Europe (150 metres+).

Unfortunately, when we did it (late May), most of the snow had melted and we had to downclimb in ski boots with our skis on our backs...not very reassuring, even for "experienced" Mountaineers!

After that what you basically join is the Vallee Blanche, a relatively easy, but very scenic 18 km long "piste" on the Mer de Glace with lots of (much harder) variations possible.
And that's it, you've done it!

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