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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Some photo’s from the trekking phase of the World Challenge trip to Ladakh in the Indian Himalayas. Tso Moriri is a lake at 4500m, “Tso” is local dialect for lake. It’s a fair drive in on dirt roads, or just dirt in places, from the “main” road. It’s a fairly well know trekking area with a route over some high passes.

These are pashmina goats, I reckon this is the place to be a goat, as a male goat your outlook isn’t great in most places but around here your coat is as good as the females and you don’t even get sheared, just combed vigorously from time to time. The best stuff comes from the soft bit just under the chin in the spring as the winter coat is coming out. I just had to buy a handful of pashmina scarves as souvenirs.

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I’ve recently returned from the Indian Himalayas, a trip as one of the leaders for a World Challenge expedition. These are some shots taken around Leh before we set out on our trek. I’ve not really had time to post them before so I’ll just post a few photo’s now without much in the way of comment.

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I’ve just got back from a couple of weeks on Corsica leading a group on the GR 20. The GR20 is one of the most famous treks in the world and reckoned to be fairly hard. There’s a fair amount of scrambling involved, some travel over snow and fixed equipment like chains and ladders etc. so it’s fair to say it’s pretty challenging. The term “rugged beauty” might have been invented for Corsica though, it’s spectacular and I really enjoyed my first trip to the island. There’s a slightly different flavour to the refuges to the normal alpine huts and I’d been particularly looking forward to staying at the bergeries which are where farmers live and tend their flocks for part of the year following the old practice of transhumance, they didn’t disappoint and I loved trying the local cheese, and the charcuterie which is famed for being produced from semi-wild pigs who roam around the island foraging and searching out their favourite food of chestnuts.



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