After not posting any photo’s for ages, here’s two days one after another! Obviously slightly busier today with the main holiday season kicking in so there was a small queue for the lift, in fact the new, increased capacity car looks like it’s copying reasonably well all things considered. But, I’d decided to skin up anyway, I’ve not skinned up to the top for ages so today was a good day for some exercise.
The trouble was, after doing a lot of nordic skiing recently, my skis felt like they weighed a ton, on any moderate gradient nordic skis are just so much better so it felt a bit like hard work until I got warmed up and into a groove.
But, a nice day which is what I took a couple more photo’s.

A few shots around Zinal as I’ve not posted many for ages, in part because I’ve been doing some other things elsewhere but also because I’ve not taken any. I actually left without my camera this morning but turned round to get it as an afterthought.

We were noticing it getting busier during the day, not sure if there’s a particular reason for that or it’s a sign that people are arriving for the holidays and grabbling a few extra hours on the slopes.

There’s always a series of slides along that ridge although I  think these were triggered by the piste security guys, it’s an obviously unsafe slope although the angle may not be too clear from the photo’. It’s likely it’ll snow again and we’ll see people skiing it regardless though, I’ve actually watched one person trigger a slide on it and they were lucky enough to ski out. His mates were stood underneath and we’re lucky not be hit by the debris.

And finally, looking like a long way down to Zinal. This can be a gem after fresh snow but the moguls have got to a size where the snow can’t fill them in, nevertheless it was about the best I’ve skied it this season.

It was a really nice winter morning in Zinal, cold, clear and just below freezing in the village. Undaunted, we got in the car and drove until we found some poor weather down the valley at the Aletsch ski area using the lifts into the village of Bettmeralp. The Aletsch glacier is the largest in Europe at 23km in length and 120 square km, the glacier itself is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The skiing is pretty good, it’s actually quite a large area with a pretty extensive lift system with a fair amount open today.

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This is a local or Swiss thing, the route over the Lötschenlücke is reckoned to be a sort of Swiss vallee blanche which might be about right as a Swiss version would probably involve a couple of hours climbing and the use of public transport. The Lötschenlücke itself is a high pass between the Bernese Alps, connecting the Lötschental valley to the Aletsch Glacier in the canton of Valais.

I decide to leave my car in Spiez and take the 0556 train to Interlaken before switching to the Jungfrau trains changing at Lauterbrunnen and Kleine Scheidegg, this makes sense as on the return I can hop off the train at Spiez and be home earlier. This being Switzerland of course there’s a fair few ski tourers boarding the train already.

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