SnowSlider – Blogging From the mountains by ise

Apart from some rock climbing on Saturday this is the first time Julie and I have managed to get out together since back in June and probably only about the third time this summer, it’s the first time I’ve been out for myself since July as well. But, it’s a great time, the autumn colours are coming out and the mountain’s empty, the cows have been moved down and a lot of the migratory birds are leaving and tourists are long gone.

There’s a nice path up from the nearby village of Chandolin, it rises about 500m but the angle’s perfect and we’re comfortably up at the Tsape restaurant in an hour for a local specialty, an “Assiette Valaisanne” which is a selection of dried and smoked local meats with local cheese.

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After skiing to the barrage near Zinal yesterday today we skied to the Illsee barrage near Saint-Luc. I’ve wanted to ski this for a while, I’ve skied the north face of the Bella Tolla before but not descended so far or skied into the Illsee. It’s a good line, a descent, a climb, another descent and another climb before finishing above Chandolin.


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Meeting up with David, a regular ski partner in the winter, and all sorts of plans had come and gone for this week, climbing the Zinalrothorn or La Besso, climbing some other peak but in the end for today the weather had the final call and after some heavy rain and snow at altitude a hike looked the best idea. The route was a classic of the area, from Chandolin passing the lift system at Saint Luc and then on and up to the Bella Vouarda with an idea to take in the Forcletta before starting a traverse back to Zinal.

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For anyone like me that was searching for an online copy of the ski bus timetable for this season I have scanned a copy as an image or JPEG and you can find it here :

http://snowslider.net/anniviers-ski-bus/

It’s also a menu item along the top of this page along with some information about local avalanche conditions and snow pack stability, this is is just information published by SLF but I’ve collected it in one place. The snow pack stability image links back to the SLF site and from there you can click on the individual icons and see the detailed analysis worksheet which is pretty interesting.