SnowSlider - Blogging From the mountains by ise

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!


Read the rest of this entry »

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.


Read the rest of this entry »

This is a raquette route we wanted to do for a while, starting from the village of Mottec, which is a few km away down the hill, wandering along some forest tracks to Grimentz. It’s actually slightly dark in the forest in places and there’s not too much sunshine so it was cold at times. There’s a lot of signs of the abundant wild life but the noise of us on the raquettes gives more than enough warning to the animals and they make themselves scarce.


Read the rest of this entry »

Today was much improved on yesterday in terms of weather, yesterday was really flat light and along with an increase in numbers on the piste it wasn’t really the best ski day. After a late start this morning we decided on the spur of the moment to go show shoeing around Zinal. I’ve done this route before but Julie hadn’t and it’s really quite excellent and it starts quite literally outside our front door which is convenient.