This was a warm up day before starting a multiday tour so our target was a small peak in the Leysin area, the Tour de Famelon where I’ve hiked in the summer (blog entry). This is a straightforward ascent although the last few metres we roped up and used ice axes and crampons to make the actual summit, mostly just for practise though.


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Above : Self portrait in the reflective glass of the Kuklos restaurant at Leysin

Leysin is an access point to a small range of gray limestone mountains where glacial erosion has created some cirques. The plan was to get a boost from Leysin at 1315m to the Berneuse at 2035m and take a tour round the “Tours”, the “Tours” being Tour d’Aï, Tour de Mayen and an ascent of the Tour de Famelon before dropping to Pierre du Moëllé and returning to Leysin.

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I left the house heading for Gstaad and was intending to park at Rougemont so it was surprising to find myself at Leysin in some ways.I’d recalled that the company I used to work at in Germany had their ski weekend to Leysin so I thought I’d decided on route to pop over and see if anyone I knew was around.

Leysin’s a pretty small place so I was surprised not to actually see anyone I knew although it was pretty cold and I maybe should have made a more vigorous search of the bars and restaurants.

They’re pretty well organized over at Leysin you can park on the outside of the village and get a free bus to the lift, if you want to park next to the lift you have to pay which I thinks a good idea.

Conditions are still very good, it’s a bit hard packed in places but I’d put a fresh edge onto my Zags before leaving this morning so, although they’re not the ideal ski for hard pack, they were handling pretty nicely.

It’s still very cold so by 4:30pm I have to say I’d had enough, it was just too cold on the chairlifts to be comfortable.

I went home over the Col des Mosses rather than hit the traffic at Glion coming from the Valais/Verber direction, as it was snowing heavily this was a bit exciting and I was sliding around in the car a bit, even back down round Chateux d’Oex and through to Bulle was pretty wild and it didn’t ease much on the autoroute round Lac Gruyere.