Col de Milon

One of our favourite walks is up to the Cabane d'Arpitetta (2786m). The refuge is in a side valley at the bottom of the Weisshorn and is dwarfed by this 4500m peak. It's encircled by glaciers that spill down on every side adding to the scale of things. The refuge makes a great destination in itself and has a wonderful terrace for lunch with a view. Today the weather was really good so we decided to carry on up and across the Col de Milon (2990m) into the Tracuit valley.

It's a bit of a scramble and the north facing side is slippery (it's snow-bound for much of the summer) so we were grateful for the chains, but the views are stunning; it makes a wonderful - though long - round-walk from Zinal.

Aletsch revisited

Having spent 6 days ski touring across the upper parts of the Aletsch glacier this spring, it was great to come back in summer and view the whole thing from a different angle.
From Brig the Furkastrasse passes through several villages from where cable cars reach the many walks with views over the Aletsch. You can buy a walker's lift pass for the day, but it's a slight mystery that there's not better info online giving the options available to you. After all, this is one of the country's absolute highlights - definitely up there with viewing the Eiger or the Matterhorn, but without being as commercialised (which probably explains the lack of information). The best of it is that the crowds dwindle rapidly once you leave the restaurant/bar/view points and hit the trail.

Movie making

You can tell we're dreaming of winter when we start putting together video clips of last season. At least the music is summery...

New Moiry Hut

 

Last weekend was the official opening of the Cabane de Moiry extension. The footpath up from the end of the reservoir was packed with walkers of all ages. The route takes just over an hour and climbs 600m, and while some carry on across the glacier to the surrounding peaks, the hut itself makes a wonderful half way point for an easy day out. 

It was built in 1924 and after nearly 90 years it's had a CHF 5.8 million make-over. The original building remains and a copper coated rectangular extension has been added to the south. Improvements include a new kitchen, a fantastic dining hall - lined with panoramic windows that overlook the glacier - more sleeping quarters and flush toilets, cunningly engineered to reduce their impact on the environment and on the people who use them (just smell the old ones from forty paces and you'll know what I mean).

The B-O tour

That's B as in Bernese and O as in Oberland, obviously, though after 6 days sweating up huge peaks and skiing back down to the cosy comforts of a bunk in a hut with no running water, it's also B and O in the olfactory sense. Just to rub it in, the view from your window is of Europe's biggest glacier, the 23km long Aletsch, which is reckoned to contain 27 billion tonnes of ice and is at one point about 900 metres deep, so it's not strictly a lack of H2O you're faced with, just that it's much too cold and hard to wash in. As www.swissinfo.ch explains, "It is not only the length but its thickness which is impressive". Quite.

It makes for some great skiing-between-crevasse shots too.

From the highest train station on the continent, at 3454m on the Jungfraujoch, via a tunnel through the Eiger, we headed up the Louwihorn, followed by the Gross Wannenhorn, Gruenegghorn and Aebeni Flue, before leaving the ice-cap at the end of the week through the Loetschenluecke for a long ski out back into spring-time.

Literal high-point, 3962m on Aebeni Flue; metaphorical high points, too many to mention. It's another world up there, accessible only with a bit of effort and all the better for it, though we could have done without the Konkordia hut's soul-sapping access ladders which take you 100 vertical metres up a cliff. Definitely not what you want after a long day and double-definitely not what you want if heights are not your thing.

Thankyou Klemen, our giant guide from Mountain Tracks, who led us safely through the week and found us some great skiing, and thanks also to fellow mountaineers Bonnie, Nora, Simon and Steve, in particular, for Jelly Babies at unexpected moments.

Haute Maurienne

It should come as no surprise that the Haute Maurienne is rather lovely and has some cracking skiing. One valley south of the Tarentaise - Val d'Isere, Tignes and all that - and bordered by the magnificent Vanoise national park, it's bound to be good.

Bonneval, at the head of the valley, is the most intact example of an old stone-built village you could hope for. Some of the buildings have been superbly converted into very nice places to stay but don't plan on driving to the door unless you're travelling by donkey.

If cross country skiing is your thing, you could hardly improve on the 80km of trails around Bessans where you can also shoot stuff (it's a biathlon centre). But why bother with the valley floor when there's great access to big peaks and glaciers in every direction? The pictures show our climb to the 3356m Signal du Grand Mont Cenis, followed by the descent - wild glacier, cliffy gullies and then open meadows - which brings you neatly back into the ski domaine and back to base after 1800 vertical metres of excellent skiing, and not another soul: we didn't cross another ski track all day. Also good were a couple of routes from Bonneval - a slightly hairy entrance into the Vallonet after booting up from the top chairlift, and the traverse across les Cordettes - an immense open snowfield - followed by the descent following the Andagne stream down to the valley floor. 

Back down the valley, starting from the resort of Aussois, is the classic descent from the Col des Hauts on the southern shoulder of the Pointe de Bellecote, down into the valley of the Ruisseau de Bonne Nuit. It would certainly be 'good night', forever, if you were caught in one of the monstrous avalanches which thunder down this stream bed. If it's safe to do so, you can ski right down towards Termignon, but when it's not feasible you can cut round through the forest and out onto a track back to the road. Whichever way you go, it's an amazing descent in return for just about 500m of booting or skinning. For guiding throughout the valley, Regis Burnel is your man. 

Just down the road...

How much great skiing can you have on your doorstep before it gets just plain greedy? Within an hour and a bit by road, there's all of the following, though I don't think it looks like this anymore since temperatures went up by about 20 degrees and the monsoon set in. Still, thanks for the memories. 

And in case you want to check them out for next season, we skied Belalp, Lauchernalp, Anzère and Bruson and posted about it here in the TimesOnline.