Krister Jonsson (www.alpinemadness.se) is a Swedish mountain guide nowadays living and working in Chamonix. We met him heli-skiing in arctic Sweden a few years back, and he is in fact the main reason we chose to come to Andermatt in the first place - he mentioned back then that he used to live and work here, and that it's a superb off-piste base, as it has the terrain, the annual snow fall, but lacks the mod-cons that draw the piste'n'party crowds. We contacted Krister when we knew that we'd be here, and he was happy to set aside three days to ski with us here in Andermatt, which by Swedish standards is a mere 'out for coffee' drive from Chamonix. Skiing with a guide is an effective way of maximising your experience when discovering a new place. It is also an effective way of minimising your wallet, but hey - you only live once. We're reasonably seasoned skiers, but Krister is in a totally different league. He spent 150 days on snow last year, and soloed the north face of the Eiger a few winters back. Last Sunday dawned a whiteout and snow, and we took a day off in preparation to restore our legs in preparation for skiing with Krister on Monday morning. On Monday, we woke up to blue skies and lots of fresh. This is both good and bad - good because it's ideal skiing conditions, and bad because it is also ideal avalanche conditions. Today's young hotshot free skiers with fat and rockered skis and resort-honed skills tend to forget that last bit when the snow's been falling.. Although we hadn't seen Krister for a couple of years, he was instantly recognisable at the base of the lift - his hair and beard is proper mountain-man still it seems.
Sarah was convinced from the start that Krister would take us on something that she wouldn't survive, which wasn't helped by the fact that I may have failed to mention to her that I'd told Krister that steep colouirs was high on my wish list. We spent the day doing three big drops around the Gemsstock, the first being a variation of the classic 'Giraffe' - amazing open fields of perfect powder, still largely untouched, and exiting in a colouir. The pole-out was part of the one we'd spent hours on a few days before. The second run took us down the Guspis into neighbouring Hospental after a twenty minutes boot-pack with skis on our packs up the next peak off the top of the Gemsstock lift. More powder, with some wind polish to keep us on our toes. The afternoon saw us in the higher bowl off the Gemsstock lift. The traverse into this drop required some gentle encouragement from Krister in order for Sarah to commit. The fall three inches to the right was unthinkable. We entered through a colouir which opened up into a very steep untouched field of snow and a long run down to what looked like a funnel into an unfeasibly narrow slot between rock walls and only air visible beyond. Well, we (I) asked for colouirs..
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