I reckon Dent de Broc is about the closest peak to the house, it’s certainly the closest to the house that I’d not been up before. Although it’s a fairly modest height it’s a slightly daunting proposition as there’s no major path up it and it’s unrelentingly steep. It was already 30′C at the bottom so it promised to be a long, hot climb.

And it didn’t disappoint, the path starts off just heading straight up the hill for the first 45 minutes or so before relenting and dropping into an easier set of switchbacks through the forest before breaking out onto the high meadows. I’d heard voices as I was going up calling out so I wasn’t surprised to meet some people moving some cows between different meadows. There’s no track up here so they’d walked up the same way I did, not just the people but most probably the cows as well.

On reaching the col, a 100m below the summit, you get some views across the local area and you see this familiar “U” shaped feature on a lot of the summits that’s so distinctive of the peaks around here.

For variety I decided to descend the other side of the actual summit to join a path to the town of Broc (above) which sits at the side of Lac Gruyére. I’d stopped to sit on an old log in the shade to eat my lunch and found this frog had beat me to the shady spot. He stuck around long enough for a photo’ before moving on though.

I also ticked the geocache GCP9VD while I was passing, as this requires a significant walk I was only the second person this year to go there and one of only 17 since 2005 when it was placed. Something of a contrast from some of the ones near car parks that get half a dozen visits every weekend. In fact, I’d taken the even harder approach by going up and over the Dent de Broc. This cache gets a terrain rating of 4/5 for the difficulty of the approach, I’m thinking of not doing any that are easier than 3/5 in future.

It’s probably overdue that some consideration is given to limiting what these large lift companies in these mega-domains are up to, successive years of bad financial results for some of the companies while others are traded like chips in some environmental poker game makes you wonder what the point of it all is. Trashing the mountain environment so people on ski holidays wait one minute less for a lift or encouraging the sad and dull pursuit of ever more mileage for the “intermediate” skier is really too high a price to pay. It’s pretty obvious skiing can be carried out without destroying the mountain completely and if that means alienating a portion of the mass-market then I can’t see it’s any great loss. Financial considerations mean skiing’s never been particularly inclusive so a few less lifts and a definitive end to heli-skiing would be no bad thing.

Passing into the national park area and I’m into a cleaner mountain environment. There’s still a lot of snow on the ground though and it’s hard work moving through it. In fact, I’m surprised to reach the col de La Leisse in ten minutes less than I’d estimated.

A view up onto the Grande Motte with the summer ski operation all ready to go next weekend. And looking down the valley where the refuge is hidden over behind the lake.

About 1100m before the Refuge de la Leisse the clouds are looking fairly ominous, it’s here at the Plan des Nettes the first photo’ is taken in fact. My first thought is I can reach the hut before it really starts to rain but suddenly it starts to pour down with a mixture of rain and hail so I’m forced to put some more clothes on. By the time I’ve geared up and then walked 600m the rain stops so had I left just a couple of minutes sooner I’d have missed the rain altogether.

I’m the only person staying in the Refuge de la Leisse and I think they’re surprised to see me, even though I’d rung them to book I think they assumed the poor weather would stop me making it. As I’m the only person I eat with the guardian, his wife, 17 month old son and cat, the downside of course is that the dormitory is empty so it’s a pretty cold night on my own.

Next morning I head over the col de Vanoise, it’s a bit lower than the col de La Leisse so there’s not quite the snow on the ground.

I spent the night at the refuge des Barmettes which is actually pretty comfortable. The food was excellent and being close to the ski station of Pralognan they’ve full main services.

Originally I’d planned to go over the Grand Bec and use the winter room at the refuge but the snow is too much and the weather is worse so I head down to Pralognan and look for a way to get to Moutiers. There’s no bus until the following day and they reckon a taxi is 60€ which seems a bit expensive so I decide to walk on the old road down to Bozel and see what the options there are. In Bozel there’s no bus for 6 hours so I decide to get a taxi and ask the tourist office if they’ve a number, after trying a local number but getting no response one of the staff offers to take me to Moutiers in her car, it was lunch time and she lived near the station so it was on her way.

From Moutiers it’s a train to Bourg St Maurice but it turns out the bus to Tignes only runs if you’ve reserved which of course I’ve not and there’s no sign of the bus. Another two passengers though have reserved although but the bus company has no record of it so we persuade them to run the bus and a coach with three of us on it heads up to Tignes via Val d’Isere. I’m pretty pleased with this, I’ve managed to get from Pralognan to Tignes for 15€ in about 5 hours which is pretty good. Picking the car up I drive back down the hill and I see a couple of people at the side of the road hitching a lift, having got a free ride earlier it’s karma that I have to stop and give them a ride. It turns out it’s a local girl needs a lift, she’d been waiting for the bus I’d just got off to return to the valley and it sailed by her without stopping completely empty which was ironic.

This was a slightly optimistic route plan, I’d wanted to go and look at a small valley just under the Grand Muveran. I’d planned to walk up the vallon de Nant then cross the col under the Pointe des Savolaires. In the event snow forced me to turn around just short of 2000m, the amount of snow on the ground was becoming a problem and I’d no way of knowing how much snow I’d experience on the other side of the col so I was aware that each metre I was moving up through the snow was a metre I was likely to have to descend. The weather also altered and it started to snow heavily so it wasn’t too pleasant.

Probably though the largest objective risk of the day was my lunch stop, there’s a small wooden building at around 1800m which was open at the front something like a terrace. That seemed a good sheltered place for lunch but as I sat there I started to hear the wood creaking alarmingly and realized the open front was due to the fact the front wall had fallen out. In fact it looked the building had started to fall down so I went to sit somewhere else in case it finished falling down while I was sat there.

It’s a nice valley, classic glacial formations and some high pasture although it’ll be some time before they move cattle up here.

Some signs of the avalanche debris from the winter, there’s some curiously deceptive slopes above here, at a quick glance you’d not see the steepness of the slopes but as I’d already looked at the map I was aware of the angles of the slopes.

As for the plant, ironically it’s a butterbur, not quite the same as the white butterbur on SwissMountainLeader but a butterbur anyway. Why’s that ironic? Because livestrong.com have stolen that butterbur image for their site and refused to remove it when asked, rather than remove the image they’ve suggested I remove my sites from Google so they can’t find them when searching for other peoples images to reuse or that I read their terms and write to them with a load of documentation after which they’ll investigate. Apparently their unauthorized reuse of my image implies I’ve accepted their terms and conditions in their bizarre view of the world. It’s appalling behavior I think and their attitude is odious, they’ve acknowledged it’s my image but they’ve made clear they’ve no intention of removing it unless they’re forced to by legal means. Personally I think instead of paying retainers for lawyers and copyright agents they should not use other peoples work without permission and when they’re caught doing it they should behave with some integrity instead of defining their conduct by what they can get away with or be forced to do.

A great photo of the path, just after getting through the avalanche debris at around 1700m.

I’ve wanted to go up the Dent de Lys for ages but never found the time before. It’s a small peak of 2014m in height in the Bernese Alps just above the ski station of Les Paccots which makes a good place to start an ascent from.

I really couldn’t weigh up conditions from home though, you can’t see the Dent de Lys from here, or from anywhere I’ve been in the last few days, so I couldn’t work out how much snow there was. I can see the nearby peak of Moléson which still seems to have snow at the same height as the Dent de Lys. Even from the car park in Les Paccots you’re tucked down in a fold of hills and I still couldn’t see the peak. So, as I left the car my conservative assessment was there was still ice and snow on the summit ridge so I took ice axe and crampons as a precaution and partly just to add some weight to the rucksack to get a good workout, along with a couple of cameras, lenses and assorted gear I was unlikely to really need.

As I paused for a couple of photo’s (above) just at the top of the ski area I still couldn’t really work the snow conditions out, there’s still a lot lying on some slopes but it’s been really warm and sunny so it’s clearing fast, obviously as the Dent de Lys has a steep approach slope I’m worried about the risk of avalanches and I think if there’s any amount of snow I’m going to have to change my plans a bit. According to the local guidebook from CAS it’s a T4 route, that basically means it’s as hard as it gets without being vertical or in permanent snow and ice.

But so far, below the snow-line it’s nice spring weather and the trail is pleasant climbing up through alpine meadows. The meadows are deserted right now though, the cows haven’t been moved up to their higher grazing yet so the fields and alpages (farms like the one in the above photo) are empty.

Some classic scenery if this area, there’s a familiar shape to the peaks and valleys around here, partly it’s familiar because there’s not many I’ve not climbed or skied on but also because the geology has left some repeating shapes in the landscape.

It’s here (above right or just above) I get the first decent view of the Dent de Lys. Basically there’s not a lot of snow there, it’s amazing really in late April that the weather is so good and that there’s so little snow at 2000m. I would have imagined I’d have been the first to make the summer ascent but crossing a snowfield I see some other footprints and later see a pair moving on the ridge line above me.

It looks like there’s a good safe line up to the col de Lys avoiding the snow which is quite likely to slide off sometime so I head up to the col wondering just where the path to the summit is, it’s just not clear from below. Hopefully there’s some cunning line through the rocks and vertical you can see from here.

From my zoom lens I can see the summit cross but the summit ridge looks interesting, there’s obviously a big drop this side and the map tells me it’s not much different the other side.

The ridge starts fairly reasonably but it’s pretty obvious the difficulty is around the small crag you see on the photo. The plan is to approach that, drop right and then climb up left to the knife edge ridge for the summit.

All along the ridge there’s ring bolts fitted, I assume the local CAS section will come and equip it sometime but today there’s no gear in place so I step carefully across before hitting a couple of sections with fixed chains which are useful.

Mostly I’ve not got any photographs of the awkward bits, I needed both hands to climb so I had to put the camera away for a while.

At the summit I met the couple who I’d seen in front of me just about to start their descent, I think the photo’s catch the atmosphere nicely there.

There’s a geocache at the summit, after the disparaging remarks I made the other day about geocachers this one is a case in point. It’s not been visited for a couple of years by anyone, most of the fanatics with a few thousands geocache finds to their name drive to a couple of hundred metres of the site to find it. As this one takes a T4 summit ridge and a 1000m of climbing it doesn’t get much traffic.

Ironically, I couldn’t find it though. I’ve logged my visit and that I couldn’t find it, I wonder after a couple of winters unvisited if the cache is still there really. It’s supposed to be under some rocks but there was no sign of any loose rocks and I’d be surprised if the snow hadn’t moved them around a bit, this winter was pretty average but the season before we had huge amounts of snow and it’s not unusual for rocks to get pushed 50 or 100m downslope as the snowpack moves around in the winter.

On the other hand, before I left home I was checking my crampons fitted the boots I was using and not reading the webpage for this cache, had I read the webpage I’d have seen the photo of the cache site which might have helped. I am pretty certain the cache wasn’t within 10m of the posted position but looking at the photo I’m wondering if the position was correct, as I read the photo that’s around 20m from the published position. Still, it’s a nice peak and I’ll try it again sometime, I’ll be surprised if anyone else tries in the meantime.

All in all, a great day out. It’s early season and I’m amazed this line is passable in late April so it’s a huge bonus to be able to do it.

It’s easy to see why few people go hiking this time of year above 1500m or so, it can be a bit difficult in places but it is worth it. Probably the most important things to consider are that you have to be prepared for the conditions underfoot which can be difficult with snow and ice presenting a significant danger in places, that you need to be a bit flexible with routes and have a few options to play with on the day and, finally, that it’s winter higher up the mountain and you need to observe usual precautions.

We were following an old road or track that goes parallel and above the Vercorin-Mayoux road, the plaque above commemorates the road being built in 1921 in fact, then up through the forest to join another track to come back along the mountain.

At some point our track vanished under snow, the terrain was awkward as the snow lying on the ground can cover boulders and if you step heavily you can go through the snow to the boulders below and potentially hurt yourself. You also keep going in to your knees in soft snow which is just annoying. So we decided to cut a line up through the forest which was extremely hard work, the terrain kept pulling us away from our waypoint so the 150m became more like 250m. You can see above left the sort of ground it was.

But after we’d hit the track as planned we got to a clearing in the forest and had a picnic enjoying the sun and spectacular views out over the valley.

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.

Some super colours, these are mostly colonisation plants, that’s things that move into poor ground and poor soil first. the really obvious one is Rosebay Willowherb that’s gone over, it’s also known as fireweed which is apt this time of year.

It’s the time of year for berries, at this height on this type of ground we’re seeing bilberries, juniper and these cowberries, they’re a bit bitter raw but they stew well and they’re pretty good with meats like roast venison. They (cowberries) are Vaccinium vitis-idaea known by other names like mountain bilberry or mountain cranberry, these berries are pretty much all part of the same family. The cowberry is pretty similar to the bearberry, the difference that you can see in this photo is the remnants of the sepals around the tip of the fruit. They (cowberries) are edible on the hill but you need to be sure what you’re looking at, most red berries are bad for you and bilberries can be; like the related bog bilberry at lower altitudes which can carry a fungus which causes a nauseous intoxication.

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.

This is a tent belonging to one of the migrant families moving with their yaks and goats, it’s a form of transhumance and it’s been practised without much change for thousands of years around here. It’s a hard life to live up here though, we’re creatures of the African plains, spending millennia hunting and being hunted, we’re not adapted for life at 5000m for any length of time.

The plan was to park near Charmey and walk along the ridge to La Berra, it was supposed to be a very small ascent but I parked at a different alpage from the one I originally intended which added a hundred metres or so to the climb.

I can’t recall how many ants you get in an average hill like this, it’s a huge number of course and this lot were certainly pretty industrious.

It’s nice walking along this ridge, we’ve walked in from the other side before which was equally nice, this area is a particular favourite of ours, the pre-alpine scenery is fantastic and there’s a variety to the scenery you lose higher up sometimes.

Looking down to the alpage where we left the car, like a lot of the alpages they do food and drink so we stopped for a beer and bought some of their cheese and ham which we had in sandwiches while out climbing on Sunday, very good!

And a quick detour on the way home to visit the latest local “crag X” at Pont La Ville, the local alpine club section have been equipping it and someone Julie works with tipped us off to take a look. It’s a conglomerate and looks quite good, routes between 4a and 6c so far I think but no topo’, we’ll probably give it a miss until there’s a topo, it’s not ideal for beginners.

Some of the alpine flowers out on the route :

click on photograph for larger version