A classic ski tour starting in the French Tarentaise (photo 1 taken on 10/4) climbed by brother Steve and I. If you have Google Earth installed on your computer open the file in this zip file to see the route. Start with a walk up of 664m altitude from La Masure via Le Crot to the Refuge de Ruitor where we spent a pretty comfortable night with 7 other ski tourers: they were clearly jealous of the 1/2 litre of wine and good food we carried up! After a fairly good night in the dormitory we leave at 6.45am to climb the Glacier de l'Invernet (photo 2) using skins on our skis, and fully tooled up for crossing glaciers. Steve is in great shape and reaches the col by 11am, and me by 11.45am; a climb of 1,265 metres vertical. After food and water we carry on over the border into Italy to climb the extra 190m vertical to reach the Tête du Ruitor (photo 3) at 3486m altitude. The Ruitor is an immense north facing Italian glacier, popular with heli-skiers from La Rosiere/La Thuile. We ski back in to France via the Glacier du Grand (photo 4) - a long glacial valley filled with moraines and bluffs - back to the refuge, and on down to a tasty beer at Le Crot. Brilliant day alive. (Here is the route overlayed to the map, GPS data captured by a Nokia E90 mobile phone prototype)