Having dabbled with ski mountaineering races for a couple of seasons now, we decided that this year it was about time to really take the plunge and enter the Pierra Menta race, held in the Beaufortain region of France each year. For the uninitiated, most ski mountaineering races are for teams of two and this is the Big Daddy of such events - both in terms of length and technical difficulties involved – including some 10,000m of ascent spread over 4 days.
Despite the paired nature of the competition, we had both adopted somewhat different training regimes in the months before: the threat of 10,000m of climb having spurred me out of bed to go skinning before work and compete in races whenever possible, whilst Jonny had opted for no skiing at all, several fags a day and a stone of weight loss. However, factoring in the huge Morgan talent reservoir, I hoped we might be evenly matched for once.
 Day one consisted a short prologue race, in the form of a time trial around the village of Arreches where the race is held. This gave us ample opportunity to effect a series of classic schoolboy errors, including both hitting the first bend far too fast and nearly crashing headlong into a barn 3 minutes from the start. After a further half an hours lung bursting effort we finished relatively unscathed somewhere in the middle of the field, with an inkling as to what lay ahead.
Day two was where the real race began, with 2600m of climb around the Grand Journee Massif. We decided to take it steadily and see what happened (if skinning at 800m an hour can be described as such), but more schoolboy errors rapidly put us down near the tail enders. The course continued mostly on ski but with long sections on foot up gullies and exposed ridge crests, with fixed rope in places, till eventually we arrived at the top of the first descent. This set the scene for pretty much all descents that followed, as we first entered an icy 45 degree gully, followed by breakable crust, narrow tracks, thick trees and plenty of rocks thrown in for good measure.
 Trying to ski this kind of terrain as fast as possible on ultralight skis, whilst wearing boots stripped bare of all non essential items such as buckles, powerstraps, tongues etc always results in impressive amounts of mayhem: any descent completed without at least one big wipeout being a major triumph. Nevertheless, we seemed to fare quite well in this department - picking up several places on each descent as we gained back a little lost ground by the finish, reaching the line in about 4 hours. The rest of the day was spent eating, sleeping and having our legs massaged by the team of on hand physio’s in order to recover sufficiently for the next day.
At 7am next morning the main street of Arreches erupted with a clattering mass of skis, poles and lycra as day 3 began with a mile of running uphill in ski boots before starting to skin. This was the long day - with 3200m of ascent, large flat sections and some 16 transitions between up and down en route. It was also the day we passed beneath the Pierra Menta itself – a huge fin of rock after which the race is named. The winners stormed round in a remarkable 3 and a half hours, whilst we were more than happy to see the finish line after 5 hours of hard effort: highlights included one climb with over 80 kick turns, followed by a descent that began by sideslipping down over rocks on a fixed rope, in order to enter the inevitable icy couloir. By the last climb, numerous skins were beginning to come unstuck, not to mention several of the competitors too.
 At 4am the next morning, cowbells began to ring around the village as the first spectators set off out onto the course. We’d not realised quite how many people turn up to watch the final day, until we arrived at the top of the first climb a few hours later where a crowd of several thousand had gathered to line the route - all having skinned up several hundred meters themselves in order to join in. The course had duly been planned to offer maximum spectator appeal, with the highlight being the ascent of the Grand Mont. This part of the course involves climbing a 300m high rock ridge, knife edged in places with long sections of fixed rope along it’s length (like many other sections of the route, a fall here would certainly prove terminal).
The final 1300m descent turned into mayhem again, as an all out race developed between ourselves and 2 other teams careering down through bushes, trees and hairpin bends to the line. All in all the Pierra Menta is a quite remarkable race both to watch or compete in, and the Beaufortain region itself offers suberb ski touring in a quiet setting which I’d recommend to anyone looking for somewhere new to spend a few days.
Team: Al Powell, Jon Morgan
See photos: pierra menta photos
More info: www.pierramenta.com
|
