It seems that this may become another bad skiing season; it has been too warm and it has not rained enough for the snow to accumulate, or it has come down as rain. This past weekend we took a chance and booked a trip to Briançon (with its elevation of […]
End of the year is probably not the best time to visit Finland, when it is cold, grey, and dark there, and especially Northern Finland, where the Sun stays below the horizon all day. However, that did not stop us from enjoying our week before Christmas in Helsinki, Tampere and […]
We wanted to take advantage of the great year-end weather and reasonably good skiing conditions, and booked a weekend in Alpe du Grande Serre, a small ski resort at the altitude of 1368 meters in Isère department. The daily newspaper’s ski report promised that all of their 20/20km of cross […]
We bought skis and shoes very late last Winter season, so we did not have many opportunities to practise our skate skiing skills. This year we decided to start early, as soon as there was enough snow and there were tracks somewhere. Last Saturday we drove to Gève in Autrans […]
(October 3, 2018) We took our moderately acrophobic friends to a mountain hike yesterday. We thought that Charmant Som (1867m) on Chartreuse would be a good compromise between ease of access, gentle slope, spectacular scenery, and lack of vertigo inducing drops or cliffs. We were right, but somewhat miscalculated the […]
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 […]