A day before the weather forecast promised sun and warm temperatures for Saturday (May 26), but we did not get any, or much of either. Instead we had strong gusty wind and cold rain on this first Spring hike in Southern Vercors, where we have not been before. It was […]
We returned to Serre Chevalier valley for the weekend (April 20-22) to enjoy a bit more winter weather and strengthen our newly (re)acquired skiing skills — it feels like every time we are on our skis we need to learn skiing anew, but luckily after each time it takes less […]
This weekend was probably one of the last chances, if not the last, to go skiing around here. Even if there is still quite a bit of snow, like in Chamrousse today, the skiing stations will be closing in early April. We had to climb quite high to reach the […]
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, […]