Piz Linard (Lavin) : Face W

A beautiful mountain I had spotted with Silvan from the Silvrettahorn in March. Couldn't get it out of my head since!

I was weak with a cold, which might have magnified the difficulties. I found the couloir intimidating. Got a bit stressed about the time when I lost 30 min climbing the wrong branch of it. I couldn't judge what the slightly steeper (45 deg?) final upper part would be like to ski down so left the skis at 3200 m in order not to worry about that and enjoy the summit. In retrospect, even with the hard snow, it would have been OK on skis.

One other person, a splitboarder, just ahead of me (he snowboarded down from the top, chapeau!). As he began traversing the ridge he dislodged some rocks which rocketed down the entire couloir. Luckily I was well off to the side at the time. There's a lot of loose stuff on the ridge. I wouldn't want to be climbing the couloir with a bunch of people ahead of me... The ridge traverse is delicate in places, but short and not a problem if you take your time and clean the snow from the holds. I was fine with a single piolet.

Skiing down was better than expected, sticking to the grippy little ridges in the clean-swept centre of the couloir. I was worried about rockfall, but it was a clear cold night (negative temps at 2000 m), and the sun only begins to reach the face at about 12h. The rock face above the couloir faces NW so is quite protected. Nonetheless, small stones were beginning to fall down at midday, and with the hard snow anything that falls doesn't stop cartwheeling down until it reaches the very bottom of the couloir. I wouldn't have liked to be in there any later.

The lower slopes were pure pleasure. Lunch in the sun watching the birds, a dip in the torrent, a nap on a hot rock. A wonderful end to the season.

Val Sagliains is plastered with a deep layer of debris from a winter of avalanches. Certainly not a valley to travel through at the wrong time if the East-facing slopes above it are still packed with snow! The benefit of the valley being so narrow and steep-sided is that there was plenty of hard-packed snow in the bottom from 2050 m onwards.

The couloir was probably not in the best of condition. The first 100 m was blocked by a wet avalanche and exposed gravel. After that the snow was hard, but never icy and quite grippy, easy cramponing and OK to ski. In places it felt thin and I could hear the water just below.

The ridge had 5-10 cm of fresh powder. Not sure how it got there because there was none in the couloir!