30th October 2008
The forecast predicted heavy snow overnight with light snow this morning before brightening up at lunch time. That fitted my schedule quite well so I was around at the car park in Moléson village at midday and had a quick snack before starting to climb up.
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23rd October 2008
It’s pretty normal at this time of year that cloud covers the plateau with the tops of mountains poking out, it lasts a month or so into December when the lower air is cool enough not to condense like this. It means that late October and November it’s just much nicer the higher up you go. I’ve (finally) received some new boots from Raichle so I went out for a few hours around Moléson. I already knew from the webcam that the cloud was going to clear above 1800m or so and I’ve lived here long enough to have seem this all hundreds of times but jut like every other time it takes my breath away as you break through the cloud and see all the peaks poking through.
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10th February 2008
Some variation from last weekend, still at Moléson and on snowshoes but this time we took a longer route taking in La Chia which is a nearby ski station. La Chia is pretty tiny, it’s got a single lift that wasn’t actually running today and it’s somewhere I’ve never actually skied. Along the way we stopped for a glass of wine at the Cabane des Cles which is a Swiss Alpine Club (CAS) hut operated by the Gruyère section which I’m actually a member of although not a very active one!
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3rd February 2008
We spend so much time in Zinal and the Val d’Anniviers now and it’s not often that we’re here in the pre-alpes so it’s ages since we’ve been to Moléson. The plan was to go out on snowshoes somewhere and originally I’d thought of the col des Mosses which is good for any kind of randonnée summer or winter but the moderate snow fall we just got meant conditions at Moléson looked good so we went there. The route was from the base of the lift in Moléson up to Plan Francy on one of the marked raquettes routes although we took a more direct finish to Plan Francy in the end.
I’m really enjoying the odd day on snow shoes, you can get to places that aren’t practical on touring skis sometimes and it’s a good exercise keeping pretty much the same muscle groups going as ascending on skis and skins. The Inook raquettes we’ve got seem to be working out well although Julie has a small boot which doesn’t fill the toe piece too well which isn’t ideal, I’m thinking I might make some sort of block to hold the toe a bit firmer for her.
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