Again this winter we spent a one-week vacation in Serre Chevalier valley in Hautes-Alpes (Mar 17-24). This time we stayed in Le Monêtier-les-Bains at the altitude of 1500 meters. According to the schedule, the bus ride from Grenoble to Serre Chevalier takes about two hours. It took us ten hours. […]
We still have not bought the skis, so we thought that snowshoeing would be a nice alternative. We’ve only done it once before in Hokkaido, but not on maintained tracks but in steep unbroken snow and heavy snowfall. So, we planned a trip to Vercors this past Sunday, since the […]
We spent four days attending the third biathlon world cup of the season in the village of Le Grand Bornand in Haute-Savoie department in France. We did not stay overnight in the village but in Annecy about 20 kilometers away, and commuted to the stadium every morning and back […]
We still had Dent-de-Crolles (2062m), the second highest peak on the Chartreuse range, to summit. It is just twenty meters shy of the highest peak Chamechaude (2082m), which we have climbed four times. Both climbs start at the altitude of about 1400 meters, but this was a bit trickier, both […]
We took a couple of days off this week to savor the last few sunny and warm Fall days, and planned a couple of easy walks on those days. Earlier this week the local weather forecast promised a significant degradation in conditions this coming weekend, but it has all changed […]
Nordic walking in the French Alps is quite a different business from, say, walking in the Central park in Helsinki. So, for our first Nordic walking experience we decided to attend a non-competitive event with, not 5 kilometers, not 10 kilometers, not even 20 kilometers, but 36 kilometers of walking, […]
Ut4M 40 Chartreuse, that is, a 42-kilometer mountain marathon with total ascent of 2540 meters and descent of 2610 meters. Two years ago we were not allowed to continue from the last check point, because we did not have lamps with us (the lamps were optional that year!). It was […]
Our easy and short recovery hike turned out quite differently from yesterday’s hike, besides being short and easy(sh). As soon as we got out of the car at the parking of Col-des-Ayes it started raining. The rain soon stopped and we had to peal off the rain jackets, since we […]
This was our first real recce for the upcoming ultra marathon that will take place in six weeks of time on the Chartreuse range. We took an early morning bus to St-Izmier and planned to climb to the first rest stop at Habert-de-Chamechaude and then down to Sappey-en-Chartreuse to catch […]