A legendary steep-skiing line on the SW face of the Dent d'Hérens

This descent has been at the back of my mind for two years, but in 2022 and 2023 conditions clearly didn't look favourable. This year seems to be the one: in mid-March and early April I was on the Tête Blanche, carefully observing the face (NB: it can be seen much better from the Tête de Valpelline, where I had never been). A way through the seracs seems possible; there just needs to be enough snow to cover all the icy sections.

At the end of May, the window looks good! Just back from our Écrins tour, I share the idea with Romain and he likes it. A legendary line, but hard to reach, rarely in good condition, and apparently little documented. And indeed, in that respect, apart from the c2c trip reports of the climb up the face in 2006 and of the ski descent in 2014, I have nothing else to sink my Hérens tooth into! No GPS track, no recent photo of the whole face. So we'll have to go and see for ourselves.

Aesthetically, we find it elegant to make a traverse of this sublime Dent d'Hérens, as a loop from Arolla, the jewel of our Val d'Hérens. That way we could make a lovely loop between Hérens and Valpelline, crowned by the Dent and the Tête that grace these two valleys like haloes.

The first day consists of getting closer to the beauty, sleeping at the Rifugio Aosta. The approach is long and very quiet: everything is untouched (particularly point 3232 m, enthroned above the Haut Glacier d'Arolla). Not a track nor a skier on this May weekend, which was nevertheless forecast to be (partly) sunny.

We had originally thought of going up the Tête de Valpelline to get a look at the West face, since the idea was to ski it on sight the next day, but the limited visibility and the likelihood of not seeing what we had come for led us to prefer saving a bit of energy and heading straight for the hut.

The place is very quiet when we arrive, but we quickly realise that the night won't be as peaceful as expected: many rope teams (all of them having come from Italy) are also planning to climb Her Hérens Majesty (summit via the SW face + West ridge, or the Shoulder, 3957 m). But we will clearly be — unsurprisingly — the only ones to venture down the West face.

The alarm is set for 4 a.m., and we set off under a sky so lit up by the full moon that our head torches seem superfluous. It all starts well, and yet… An inhospitable wind soon wears us down all the way up, then picks up with ever more serious gusts as the summit draws near. The storm is fierce, and doubt creeps in.

3700 m, the wind is harsh. 3800 m, the wind is hellish. 3900 m, I don't know what to think; the wind has frozen my last working neurons. 4000 m, will this wind let us reach the summit? 4100 m, the spirit of the rope is stronger than this raging wind: we rope up and take extra care on the knife-edge ridge.

4173 m, Dent d'Hérens. An emotional moment on the summit with the 2 other rope teams who battled the elements alongside us. Special thanks to Johann (a guide with Esprit Liberté) for leading the way on the summit ridge, which looked far from inviting with so much snow and wind!

While our companions in misfortune go back down the way they came up, we click into our skis to discover this long-coveted West face, which from the very first turns seems to be in exceptional condition. What follows is a clever route between the skiable slopes and the seracs, trying to anticipate the breaks in the terrain and the sections of bare ice.

We weren't wrong: an hour later and a thousand metres lower, our happiness matches the physical and mental investment we put into this project and the ambition we had in taking on such a route.

Another 20 km, 3 cols and 4 glaciers still separate us from Arolla to complete our project (including a there-and-back to the Tête de Valpelline to immortalise that famous West face!), but it doesn't seem insurmountable: heads in the clouds, we savour the beauty of these moments of effort and doubt, of dream and turmoil, which end up crowned in such a beautiful way.