Pic de Girantes (ski)

Pic de Girantes and back on skis in under 3 mins from Lee Sharp on Vimeo.

With temperatures rising and Sunday already booked up with other things, Monday seemed the perfect oppotunity to grab another ski tour. Several new acquaintances had expressed an interest in forming a posse, so after a few phone calls on Sunday evening a rendezvous was set for early Monday morning. Bas and Matt met me at Castet d'Aleu and we headed upto the Etang de Lers (1250m) where snow stopped further onwards travel.

The nordic skiing pistes helped us to save a little time climbing up towards the Port de Lers, but we were soon heading up through the trees heading for our objective Pic de Girantes (2088m). It's an interesting slightly indirect route which climbs to a col at 1810m before taking in an unnamed peak 1976m, crossing another col and then reaching the summit. We had a good skin track to follow from a large group which must have made the ascent on Sunday.

After a quick lunch we descended in good snow conditions. Below m the snow got very heavy and the final descent back to the car was in very sticky snow which coupled with the shallow gradient made even skating difficult.

12km, 800m/2500ft of ascent and a total of 2hr 40min for the trip.