La Grivola 3969 m,  Gran Paradiso range, Italy
1st ski descent of SE Face by Boris Dufour & Rémy Lécluse le 14/05/2012.
570m,  45 to 50°,  5.3 E4

Boris is a writer & photographer. He is a surfer & a skier.

Past winter, we were in touch for an article about my « extreme skiing ski school ».
He came along to watch & make some photographs.
Another part of his article will be about my passion: looking for some new skiing routes.
Most of April, I spent evenings on web weather forecast looking at rain, clouds or heat!...
At least, this mid May a window seems to occur.
12 & 13 are bad but 14 looks pretty good: good weather with a zero level quite low altitude with unfortunately quite a strong North wind.
Due to bad weather, I had to cancel my job for the weekend. I phoned Boris to offer him to do my project on la Grivola. Faces NW & NE have been skied by Stefano De Benedetti 1979 & 1980. SE face is still unskied.
I really like Gran Paradiso range & I never been on top of La Grivola, it’s a good way to do it.
Sunday afternoon, we are walking up to Vittorio Sella hut, seeing many ibex & mountain goats.
Two am, wake far too early after a long skiing season, it’s really hard to get out from bed!
Four hours skinning up on  hard pack snow lead us to the rimaye.
Not so much snow on the face but it looks like it will be OK with may be a bit of “dry skiing”.
The ascent line cross the central spur between two main couloirs: it could be a problem skiing down.
About nine am, we are on skiing mode!
Boris & I, are taking pictures of each other; more Boris than me!
He’s got the hard, very hard duty of steep skiing & on same time making good pictures : not easy at all. He is brilliant at that.
Weather forecast was right, NE wind keep the snow hard & fortunately, half an inch of fresh snow from last night give us reasonable grip.
 Skiing down, I am looking for an easier way to cross the central spur.
Quite quickly, I find a kind of snowy ledge higher on the spur & we traverse to the second couloir quite easily.
 Unfortunately, we have to do a short abseil (five meters) to get down a rocky “bottle neck”.
A short skinning up lead us to a pass & then more than one thousand vertical on perferct corn snow down to the hut.  Just fabulous!

Thanks to: Adidas Eyewear, Arc’teryx, Dynastar, Grivel et Scarpa
Rémy Lécluse
 

Massimiliano Blardone did not miss his comeback at Dynastar and Lange this season by ending third of the World cup in Giant Slalom.

After an exceptional winter, punctuate with four podiums in World Cup including two victories in Alta Badia and Crans-Montana, the Italian chose to sign two years more with Dynastar for skis and bindings and Lange for boots.

Massimiliano Blardone: "The decision to stay with Dynastar and Lange was matured during the season. We have created a very strong link with all the team. The professionalism and the mutual respect are fundamentals to realize the best results. The group believes in my sports capacities and develops for me the best equipment. It was a motivation important for me and I am going to be able to continue this collaboration serenely during the next two seasons."

All the teams is very satisfied with the pursuit of this collaboration and wishes Max Blardone all the best for the coming years.

Honors:
24 top 3 finishes, including 7 World Cup wins
2nd in the Giant Slalom World Cup rankings 2006 & 2007
3rd in the Giant Slalom World Cup rankings 2004 & 2012
5th in the Giant Slalom at the World Championships in 2009

William Bon Mardion took away the last stage of the World cup of ski mountaineering this weekend in Tromso, in Norway. Winner in the South Tirol few weeks ago, the skier of Arêches finally leads in front of two Swiss, Yannick Ecoeur and Martin Antamatten. This stage took place on two days. On Saturday took place the sprint and on Sunday the classic race.

Kilian Jornet gains nevertheless the general ranking of the World cup with 543 points, in front of William Bon Mardion (479 points) and Manfred Reichegger (ITA). Note that Bon Mardion is ahead the male individual classification of the World cup.

Thanks to everyone participating and voting to the web contest Designed by me 3. All creations rival imagination, color and style!

The n°1 of the game is Hanne De Bauw winning a pair of ski Dynastar designed by her!

But there are also nice prizes for the 10 firsts (one pair of ski, skiboots, skis and boots bags, gloves)!

Last but not least, not only participants win, we thought of those who bothered to vote offering a pair of ski to the one that was drawn, Maxime Bilodeau!

See you in October 2012 for the next edition!