Having recently converted to nordic skate skis my distance in a day has been dramatically curtailed, in fact I’ve dropped from being able to do over 40km in a day to single figures! I was actually a bit surprised by this, I expected to be dropping a bit of distance but not really this much. Although it seems a contradiction I’m actually moving quicker on the skate skis but it’s more demanding than I expected. However, I probably need to find out what sort of distance people are considering normal for a skate session, I’ve seen a couple of articles suggesting people are doing much shorter and more intense circuits which maybe consistent with my experience.

In some ways that’s a shame, I’ve never been to Schwarzenbühl before,  despite it being only 28km in a straight line from home albeit more like 40km by road though, so I’d have liked to look around more at the 45km or trails they have. But, the skate skis confined me to a small part of the area. As the photo’s show, it was a bit cloudy which was disorientating for me, I’d have said I know this area pretty well and that I’d climbed, skied or walked up most of the peaks around here but this one isn’t known to me at all. It’s a small group of hills or summits that run up from Zollhaus near Schwarzsee the highest of which is barely 1600m but they’ve a substantial amount of snow and I was pretty glad of both the 4-WD and winter tyres on the small access road.

Good snow, well prepared and quiet although I don’t quite understand how it works at the weekend, there’s an 8km alpine ski area which doesn’t sound much but the runs actually looked really good and with the current cover it’s clearly possible to ski well below the bottom of the lift through some classic pre-alpes terrain. I’d assume that the alpine area gets a few skiers at the weekend so along with the nordic skiers, and the people on the network of winter trails, I can’t quite understand how access works. The road up isn’t great and even on a weekday it was hard to park. There was a bus parked up and I’d guess you must park in the valley and get the bus up which looks a good idea. A particularly good idea as I reckon on a good day you’d be able to ski a long way back down to the valley off-piste.

So all in all, I’d be tempted to pop back with some different gear, classic touring gear, snow shoes or even some alpine touring gear, if I get the time.

Conscious that snow would be melting on the lowest sections I took 4 days this week to complete the Grande Traversée du Jura (GTJ) that I’d started back in January, along the way I’ve also completed the Grande Traversée Neuchâteloise (GTN)  and the Traversée du Jura Suisse (TJS). Although the remaining sections are generally taken over six days I decided to double a few up and cover the 140km in four days.

I started up at Le Prévoux in Switzerland, this isn’t technically the start of the GTJ but it’s close by and somewhere I could get to easily using Swiss public transport, from there I skied the couple of km to the normal GTJ start and headed for La Brévine where I’d been the previous week skiing the GTN and TJS. I’d switched sections around so I was intending to ski to La Brévine on the GTJ and then drop onto the TJS and ski to Les Verrières de Joux rejoining the GTJ there.

La Brévine (above left) is beginning to lose snow but the tracks were complete and skiable although the thin cover meant they’d not been made for a few days and probably won’t be again now. Although the snow was thin in places it was a pretty good days skiing and I easily reached Les Verrières de Joux (above right) although I had to walk the last few hundred metres.

Next day it’s a fairly long climb out of Les Verrières de Joux and I have to rack the skis on my rucksack for a while as it’s just not skiable, by the time I reach the track (above left) it’s snowing and there’s a strong wind so I ski to Les Fourgs finding a cafe to get a warm drink before continuing towards Métabief.

From Métabeif I’m heading for Rochejean for the night to stay at a Gîtes d’Etape, the CLAJ which was empty apart from some students from Paris who shared their dinner and company with me for the evening.

And the the following morning I climbed back onto the GTJ, this was hard work, it was easy enough to walk the few km back to the route up a closed road (above right) but once I’d got my skis back on I had to climb in the face of a strong wind to summit Mont d’Or which was really hard work. The day stretched a bit as well, the refuge I’d planned to use claimed no knowledge of my reservation and claimed to be full, a bit poor really, I’ve looked at the email confirmation and there’s no doubt they said they’d got space in and no doubt I’d confirmed I would be there.

Fortunately I found space at a nordic centre in Chapelle de Bois called La Maison du Montagnon which was great, the last nordic centre I stayed at was pretty poor, lousy service, poor food and generally not particularly good booked as part of a course. But this was excellent, the food was superb and I had a great meal with some other French nordic skiers and got a reasonable nights sleep with a good breakfast. But the extra distance notched this up to a 45km day which is a lot carrying gear really with nearly a couple of thousand metres ascent thrown in.

The next, and final, day I skied to La Cure via Les Rousses, I actually deviated from the GTJ slightly to go into Les Rousses to take a look around before getting a train at La Cure.

It’s a interesting time to ski on the GTJ, you’ve got to be prepared to walk for short sections, for me it becomes more of a journey through the mountains at that point and more enjoyable but you probably need to be sure your boots are OK to walk in!

I’d planned to take three days to ski from Les Verrières de Joux, just over the border in France, to Les Bugnenets using the Traversée du Jura Suisse (TJS) route which mostly coincides with the Grande Traversée Neuchâteloise (GTN) but it’s not been great weather all week so when I arrived in Les Verrières de Joux I decided to take the Grande Traversée du Jura (GTJ) route to La Brévine. La Brèvine is on all three routes and I was hoping that the GTJ route although longer had a little more height that might lift me out of the rain into some light snow. The rain did alternate between sleet and snow so that seemed fairly successful. I only managed one photo’ (the first one) as it cleared as I got closer to La Brévine.

Next day leaving La Brévine actually started pretty nice and I was skiing in light cloud and broken sunshine for a few hours through some great scenery. La Brévine sits in a wide flat valley so it’s fast skiing on flat tracks for a start before some longer climbs.

But by the time I’ve got to La Sagne that weather has altered and it’s snowing and raining alternately and it’s just damp. But again on the the third day it started clear and I started the climb up through the the foret (above right) in some nice weather.

But, by the time I got to the col it was terrible, driving snow and a strong wind. At first the wind was annoying and slowed me down as I pushed into it but just around where the above left photo’ was taken I needed to turn right so the wind was across my path and threatening to blow me over. I met a group of local skiers around and we stopped to discuss how pleasant the weather was before heading off in different directions.

The final shot is taken skiing out of Vue des Alpes which was heavy going. I’d got a detailed route card with split times for legs of the trail down to half a minute accuracy because I wanted to make a bus at Savagnières, the first bus was around 1300 and would get me home for around 1630 while the next was after 1600 and would mean Julie coming to the station to meet me. My split times up to Vue des Alpes had been pretty much on target but I was sure I wasn’t going to make the bus, the snow turned wet and heavy and kept sticking and freezing to my ski bases which meant I couldn’t glide at all so between that and having turned back into the wind I was certain I’d not make the time. But, despite that and helped by some downhill sections I cut 10 minutes off my total estimate and arrived with 40 minutes to spare for the bus so I was able to get a warm drink and wait in comfort.

That was a surprise! Apparently they’re all done with chainsaw, or at least the park is called “chainsaw sculpture park”, I’m dubious, or impressed, it’s pretty detailed work for a chainsaw I’d say. There’s loads of them as well, this is just a handful nearest the nordic track.

Actually, that one’s just shed not a sculpture of a shed, it’s a nice view to the alps from here with the Gastlosen ridge just visible in the background.

I’d skied over here doing the Traversée du Jura Suisse but dropped off the ridge in poor weather. I wanted to go back and ski the section in the ridge so I parked at col du Mollendruz where there were only two other cars and set out along the ridge. It’s a around a 27km loop from col du Mollendruz to Pré de Denens and back and I didn’t really see anyone until near Pré de Denens where a group of school children were coming the other way.

After turning round at Pré de Denens I quickly caught the children up as the section was a steady climb with a couple of flat sections. Obviously I was stopping to take a couple of photographs which took a few minutes so I was later surprised on a descent to be passed by a couple of the faster children but they were dropping into tucks for speed.

And (above) I catch the children up again, my long legs and adult power giving me a huge speed advantage until some of them pass me again on the descent where youthful recklessness has the advantage.

Some views over the plateau to the main alpine chain, the forecast was poor weather in the morning and sun int he afternoon and that’s exactly what happened. In fact it steadily improved so it was fine weather by the time I got home.

It was pretty cold this morning and we were a little undecided where to go, we’d been at Sorens yesterday and had an idea to return there and do one of the longer loipes but I’d been wanting to go to the Les Rasses in the Jura. Looking at the webcam first thing though it looked pretty bleak but an hour later I’d convinced myself it looked OK and the cloud was breaking so we went to Les Rasses.

It’s just near Sainte Croix which is on the French-Swiss border and the is the typical Jura scenery, forest and rolling nordic terrain. You can ski all the way from Les Rasses to near Creux de Van, a large limestone cirque, but it was a bit farther than Julie wanted to go.

The sun did nearly come out, certainly it got warmer, when we left the car it was around -8′c and it was hovering around freezing when we got back. The odd patch of weak sunlight made some atmospheric effects which are hard to get on camera but these aren’t too bad.

I did some nordic skiing over here a few weeks and it was obvious that the snowshoeing would be pretty good so when I needed somewhere to go today this seemed an obvious idea. We set off using one of the winter paths but this meandered a bit too much so we took a direct route in the forest to get to the Bison Ranch. We’d planned to get some lunch here which was fine but the menu was a bit limited. soup or bison sausage only, fortunately both turned out to be great with some vin-chaud and home made bread.

It’s holiday time in mainstream locations but places like Nods are pretty much untouched by holiday traffic so we were the only people we saw on snowshoes all day with the exception of a couple who turned up at the restaurant at the same time.

I parked the car around at Les Hôpitaux-Vieux and nearly stayed in it. It had been cold at home but there seemed the chance of some sun, by the time I’d crossed the border into France and got to Les Hôpitaux-Vieux that chance of sun had vanished and it was snowing heavily and very cold. My first thought was to do a short 3 or 4 km circuit two or three times and take advantage of the hot flask and sandwiches in the car. But, once you’re moving it’s not so bad and I headed for Les Hôpitaux-Neufs instead picking up a section of the GTJ (Grande Traversée du Jura) I’d not skied before.

On the loipe it was perfectly quiet and I saw half a dozen people while I was out, by the time I’d got to Métabief it looked busy, it’s a small downhill station but it’s holiday time and it was pretty busy, some good conditions bringing out the crowds. That’s where the two photo’s above were taken, where I’d parked I was one of two cars in a large empty car park, nordic is just perfect at busy times without the crowds at the alpine centres.

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.