Author Archives: Jamie
Grand Paradiso summit
Made it – on top of Italy!
Getting colder
Approaching the summit. A Scottish flag in the sky!
First light
One of the great things about starting early is watching the sun arriving on the mountains.
A morning stroll
An early start – it was a long way to the summit!
Gran Paradiso
If you go high enough, winter is still with us. We were lucky enough to be able to climb Gran Paradiso in Italy. We stayed in a nice hut, made an early start, skinned up the glacier then scrambled over some rocks to reach the top – all very exciting! More photos to follow.
From blizzards to …
Spring is in the air! The Black Kites are back in big numbers down in Geneva, I heard a few Chiff-Chaffs passing through and in Chamonix this guy was out and about on our woodpile. It is incredible to think that he was somewhere out there during the -23c temperatures when I could hardly go [...]
Grandes Jorasses
On the other side of Breche Puiseux the views of the Grandes Jorasses are wonderful. This, along with the Eiger and Matterhorn makes up the three toughest North faces to climb in Europe.
Breche Puiseux
Finally, after 3 weeks of working, another great day in the mountains! I climbed up to Breche Puiseux with Damien, our guide from the Compagnie des guides de Chamonix. This is looking back down on the Vallee Blanche. I am a bit disappointed I didn’t take one more for this panorama – it would have been nice to get [...]
Crans Montana
I have just returned from a week in Crans Montana. The view is quite nice (see above) but other than that there is not a great deal to get excited about. The whole resort is South facing so the snow doesn’t hang about for long. There tends to be a lot more of the below [...]
Col de Belvedere
This is becoming a habit! This was taken on a recent tour with Damien, our guide from the Compagnie des guides de Chamonix. We went on up to the Col du Belvedere from where we had a fairly steep and exciting descent. We were safely roped up though so that if we fell (which of [...]
New toy!
I have recently acquired one of these iphone gadgets that all the kids seem to have been talking about recently. I took it down to the frozen lake shore to test out an app which simulates a tilt shift lens. This is clearly a first attempt but it could make for some interesting results – [...]
The boonies!
Here we are in the middle of nowhere on our tour from Les Contamines.
A Swiss trip
I went on a day trip to ski the pistes in Villars, Switzerland. It is a very nice resort, we spent most of the day going in and out of this sea of cloud. It looks like there are some nice spots for some off piste skiing there but I did not have any equipment [...]
It’s been a while!
I have not posted in a while and I said I would put some pictures of our recent ski trips up so here we go. I will post a few over the next few days but to see more just now click on this link. This is us skinning up on a nice tour from [...]
The ice cometh, man!
It has been a while and we have done some nice skiing since my last post – more to follow. However, for now I must show you these incredible pictures. Very cold temperatures and very strong winds here in Versoix (near Geneva) have resulted spray from the waves freezing to anything they touch. The formations [...]
On top of the world (again)
I know it is basically the same picture as in the last post but it is quite a nice view!
Les Grandes Montets
And there we have it – the top of the world. Well, the top of the Grandes Montets ski area in Argentiere, but it felt pretty special to me!
Chuffed!
It seemed that the Alpine Choughs (chuffs) were enjoying being at Les Grandes Montets as much as we were; they love to play in the rising air.
The loneliness of the long distance skier
Another shot from our day at Flegere, the views of town were rather nice, despite the grey weather.