Report from March 3, 2025

Yesterday, Marco and his buddy Shanty took me to a new side-country area at Courmayeur Ski Resort in Italy.

The zone holds nothing but couloirs.

It hasn’t snowed in a week but this zone is holding delectable Alaskan Velvet (recrystallized snow).

We got excited as we started up and felt the good snow.

Our original plan was to climb the ridge, drop into the drainage on the other side, and ski some chutes over there.

We immediately let go of that plan and focused on the Alaskan Velvet under our feet.

Shanty & Marco let me drop first…

We started on the backside, the sunny side.

The idea was to rip some pow in the sun then cut over and drop into the shady side where the velvet lives.

The sunny pow was bunk.

Sun-cooked and crusty.

I realigned my brain for soft snow and big turns, took a deep breath, and dropped into the shade.

I traversed left avoiding a line I deemed thin and rocky and delved into the main artery of the face.

Steep, narrowish, smooth, straightforward.

The initial turns were silky, velvety, clean.

After a handful of delectable turns, the choke snow threw up some resistance before the goodness returned.

This pattern repeated until the final choke at the base of the chute where the snow turned more or less all bad and spicy.

I bounced through the rough snow as I slowly bled speed onto the apron.

The boyz skied down fast and hard and made me look bad.

Back up.

One chute to the skier’s right.

Same results, but I went last this time.

We were very satisfied and headed home.

At home, I met up with my wife who’d just gotten her ski bag from the airline and we rolled up for one last run at 4:30 pm.

The lifts are open until 5 pm here, which is very cool.

Grazie, Italia!

Photos