SnowSlider - Blogging From the mountains by ise » snowshoes

Zinal Snowshoes

ise — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 14:39:54 +0000

I think today was about the busiest I’ve ever seen the lift here, each time I looked out there seemed to be a queue. Fortunately I’d not intended to go skiing today so it wasn’t a big deal. Up the valley towards the glacier isn’t great conditions currently, there’s a risk of avalanches from the unsecured slopes either side and it’s not a great time to go that so we took a route I’ve used a few times down the valley. There’s a nice little route we use crossing the forest and tracking along the river for a way that’s always enjoyable.

That pile of stones is an old lime oven, apparently last used around 1880 there’s the remains of several ovens and the activity along the valley floor.

Looking up there (right) at the Garde de Bordon (3310m) or actually the small peak on the ridge leading to Garde de Bordon itself, as far as I know it doesn’t have a name. There’s a volume of snow to come down of the ridge though yet unless they decide to bomb it from a helicopter which they occasionally do.

Looking up the valley at Mont Durand (left) and the Besso (right).

Nods

ise — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:24:52 +0000

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.

Sainte Croix

ise — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 17:00:12 +0000

Ste-Croix is in the canton of Vaud but in the Jura range mountains on the Swiss-French border, Ste-Croix is just a few km from the French border. Despite it being local to the valley house I’ve never been over there in the winter, in fact I’ve only really been to the Jura to enjoy the sport climbing on the crags there. This was a fairly random trip on snowshoes, I’d looked at the map and had a couple of ideas for routes but we were flexible.

The best idea seemed to be to just park somewhere and head out, I only really wanted to get an idea of the terrain in the area so I’d no particular objective in mind. In the end I decided to head for the top of Mont Cochet which is a pretty small peak near the town, there’s some ski lifts below there which weren’t running today. Snow was good though, just not really enough for them to piste I think but perfect for snow shoeing.

On the top of Mont Cochet there were a handful of people including a guy on skis with a couple of lads on snowboards they’d presumably carried up. Really cover wasn’t ideal for it particularly on the descent they’d picked as I think the wind had shifted a lot of the snow, it could have improved lower down though. What was funny what the skier set off seemingly determined to call out every rock he encountered, so he set off shouting caillou” every few seconds, you can only assume it was a long descent!

New Years Eve – Snowshoeing in Zinal

ise — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:32:40 +0000

On of the great things about snowshoeing, and living somewhere with a bit of snow, is you can quickly find yourself away from the beaten track. These pictures are just from a short tour around the forest behind the chalet. There’s no marked trails so you can wander through the forest as you want.

Apparently the abundance of rowan berries we seem to have this year is a good omen for a snowy and cold winter. So far it’s more in line with long range forecasts though, it’s not bad but we’ve seen temperatures ranging from -20′c to +4′c or higher.

The snow’s still pretty good although down here it’s below 2000m and it’s got a bit saturated by rain and melting, without the snowshoes it would be pretty heavy going.

Zinal Glacier (April 11th)

ise — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 10:16:47 +0000

It’s possible to get in and under the Zinal glacier. It’s a walk up the valley crossing under some steep ground where there’s a number of rock and ice falls this time of year but it’s really interesting to see the glacier from this unique perspective.

The water flowing under the glacier has carved these caves out conveniently sized so we can walk in easily. What you notice is how dry it is, any water is frozen and even dust in seams of ice is bone dry, almost like powdered cement. There’s a lot of dust as well, it’s where the glacier has ground the rock and stones it’s passed over so you get an idea if the incredible forces at work.

St-Jean – Orxival (10th April 2009)

ise — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 06:07:08 +0000

It was a very spring like start in St Jean, no snow on the ground so we set out carrying our snowshoes on the sacks and climbed the first hour up through the forest on foot.

More signs of spring with local flora beginning to establish itself after the snow receded.

After the first hour we switch to snowshoes and continue climbing in the the high Orxival valley before making a high traverse across variable snow to Grimentz and a welome drink in a bar then back on the bus to Zinal.

Col de Vijiva (9th April 2009)

ise — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 15:01:17 +0000

I’ve done variants of this before on skis, on foot and on snowshoes. Today when conditions were fairly unfavourable in terms of avalanche risk I picked this route as I could find a fairly low risk path through the terrain, even so, we hit our turn around time before we reached the height I might have liked to attain.

After being up in the snow it was very spring-like on our descent back to Saint Luc, some early flowering plants already taking advantage of the retreating snow line.

Ättenberg, Schwarzsee

ise — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 15:48:36 +0000

I suppose to be quite honest we didn’t quite make the actual Ättenberg summit, it’s been snowing a bit and visibility was poor so were on Ättenberg to be more correct. Starting from Schwarzsee on snow shoes we headed onto the mountain to find we were the only people there so we were in fresh deep snow all the way breaking trail which was tiring in places but it’s always fun.

The route we took winds up through the forest passing through the odd clearing and glade, just enough cover to help visibility really.

A series of photo’s Julie took of me for a change!

Schwarzsee – Snow shoeing

ise — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 15:32:03 +0000

Even though I’ve been on snowshoes all week we decided to pop out and have a a couple of hours more, partly that’s because my skis are in Zinal though and I’d decided I wasn’t going to pay for lift tickets around here if I had a season pass for somewhere else.

A rare shot of me!

And after an enjoyable route from the top back to the bottom we took a stroll on the frozen Schwarzsee itself, the newspaper mentioned it was frozen a few weeks back and there were a lot of people out on the ice along with a couple of cars and a horse pulling a sleigh at one point. It’s still a bit unnerving to walk around on though!

Bella Vouarda, Saint-Luc

ise — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 11:14:20 +0000

I’ve skied up in this area as a ski tour but found the descent slightly disappointing so as it’s great high mountain scenery I thought it would make a perfect snow shoe trip. The route starts off from Saint-Luc and to save some time we rode the funicular up to Tignousa (2178m) and walked in along the sentier planétaire. The sentier planétaire is a route from the funicular to around the Hotel Weishorn, along the way are scale models of the planets of the solar system at scale distances from each other, it’s quite interesting and really brings home the relative distances between the planets.

The Bella Vouarda is a pass between the Forcletta and the Pointes de Nava which form a ridge running down to the Hotel Weisshorn, I’ve also been over here in the spring as an extended version of the classic traverse from Saint-Luc to Zinal.

As a snow shoe route this was pretty long, over 17km and nearly 1000m of ascent and probably not the easy stroll people generally associate with snow shoeing.

Mostly it’s been ski tourers up here so far and on snow shoes it made sense to take a slightly different line picking some of the firmer snow to keep the effort of breaking trail to a minimum.

The great thing with this route is that it’s high enough to be above the tree line and once you’ve left the main track to the Hotel Weishorn behind you’re in a fairly remote high alpine area.

From the Bella Vouarda we took a ridge line and traversed in to the Lac du Toûno before turning to descend via Le Chiesso and picking up one of the marked snow shoe trails back into Saint-Luc.