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Belated Alpine Adventures

Admiring the scale of the Brenta Dolomites in all it's glory

Well, embarrassingly enough, here's a post I should have completed last autumn, when time disappeared very quickly and then I did the same for 5 months. Admittedly I've officially been back for more than 6 weeks now, so apologies to anyone who's been waiting. This post is a selection of images from a well earned holiday last summer (well earned by Emilie anyway...) to the French Alps, over to the Dolomites and a sneaky few days in Venice. Hard Life.

"Camping with the Stars" near Lachat, Crest Voland, French Alps

A few days visiting friends and family in the French Alps for walking, flying, mountain biking, drinking wine and the rest.

Emilie's grandfather makes and puts out these signs on the local mountain trails for all to follow

Walking above Les Allues, with the Mont Blanc Massif in the background

Then off to the Italian Dolomites for a week of Via Ferrata based around Lake Garda and then into the Brenta Dolomites - another amazing trip to a fantastic place.

On a very hot route above Lake Garda

Looking back towards Arco from near the summit

I'm sure the ladders are solid...

HIYAAAAA!!!!!!  A big northern hello from high in the Brenta Dolomites

We drove up into the mountains some more to the Brenta Region - the most spectacular via ferrata I've seen so far - classic limestone cliffs, made me feel like we were going to bump into Sly Stallone any minute...

Not a bad view really...

Sunset at the Rifugio Alimonta

An amazing evening panorama

Being a British mountaineer, I always carry extra things to help out - spare gloves, two spare hats and a long handled shovel

Well marked trails throughout the alps make life much easier!

We came down from the right to the col, slid down the glacier on our bums and then went up the left cliffs the next day.

Summer snow can throw some crazy shapes

Mind the Gap...

Sunny afternoons

And for some R&R we decided to head for a couple of days in Venice to finish off the trip before the long drive home...

The obligatory gondolier shot...

I loved Venice, but so do all the other tourists.  Wander around if you want to escape from the crowds.

Death to The Man

A day trip to the most colourful place in the world, Burano.  Amazing and if you get the early boat you have the place almost to yourself

A Burano panorama, a few minutes before torrential rain arrived!

Amazing little streets and very easy to escape the crowds if you wander off the beaten track.

A little Superhero piece to finish on. A superb trip and now time to work through the images from last season in the Fosdick Mountains, Antarctica. Phew, there are thousands of them! 

Northern Lights time lapse

A little time lapse video of the northern lights from our cabin in Norway. As you can see the stars are spinning through the sky so yes, it is speeded up! "Pas mal" as they say in France. Booked through The Polar People. Amazing spot. Photos and other stuff to follow I PROMISE!!

Been a while...

Well well, after being away for the last 4 and a half months I'm finally back at home sweet home and starting to trawl through the unpacking and post, emails and long list of things to do. Since my last blog post in summer 2011 lots has happened: another trip to the dolomites, a season in Antarctica, a Patagonia tour and a trip to Arctic Norway for the Northern Lights to name a few. Here's a photo from each to give you an idea of what's to come in the near future.

Watch this space...

Another amazing time in the Dolomites

101 days in the Antarctic

Torres Del Paine and Patagonia

Northern Lights near Tromso, Arctic Norway

Magic Feet

YOU lookin' at ME !?!?

Anyone fancy the idea of running 70km (43.5 miles) over two days across the hills of the South Downs in the heat of July? (OK, only a British July...)

That was the question I sent out to some friends a few months ago - everyone asked - "what's the event?" and "which charity are you running for?" The event and charity is called FUN - yes, I wanted to do it for fun.

Not surprisingly many made their excuses and said no. However, three equally "special" individuals were up for the challenge (the first of a few I think...) and a big fat thanks to them - Kristian, Brendon and Marty - for joining me in this slightly unusual idea.

Starting in Upper Beeding and running along the South Downs Way all the way to Eastbourne Pier for Fish and Chips - that was the idea, being Brits an' all. So Dream Team in place, off we went. Here's a few pictures and a short 4 minute video I made last night from compact camera video clips and the "herocam"!! Enjoy

The last few miles across Beachy Head and down onto Eastbourne Promenade...

Happy, Sweaty People...

Fish and Chips at the finish!!

So a great big thanks to Marty, Brendon and Kristian for coming along - just for fun...

Ski Mountaineering in Norway - Part 2

Ahhhhh! Been away and too busy and finally getting round to writing this. And this time I'm going to cut the chat and just get onto the pictures as the last post was a bit waffly I think! Back to the tree skiing...

and the bog trotting...

Skis are a very useful tool on many surfaces it seems!

So, back to the Lyngen Alps peninsula proper, a skiing mecca! So much to choose from, so little time...

Storgalten...

Amazing views south along the Lyngen Alps Peninsula

On some peaks, Alison and I searched out lines all to ourselves... This was one of my favourite descents of the whole trip - a steep start into a lovely couloir above the fjord below followed by a big wide slope to put in some neat little turns! Brilliant.

That is one Happy Ali :-)

Cutting it up as she skies out of the couloir on to the main slopes

We skied the right of the 3 main lines here and came over under the second gulley, hard life...

Dougal looks out on the final slopes back to the car after skiing another line on the main face.

Back to camp and a little evening flight for me to get warmed up for the other plan on the trip - to fly some of the peaks when the snow's a bit ropey! Midnight sun descent to the beach, pas mal...

The Midnight Sun

And so it was on to one of the finest and most adventurous objectives of the trip - Stor Jaegervasstinden - 1543m and a mix of the usual woodland approach, a large valley, a glacier, a couloir and then a broad ridge to the summit.

Up the glacial valley with lots of recent avalanche debris on the south facing slopes to the left

The end of the glacier with the couloir cutting diagonally up to the right from the skiers

Out on the broad ridge ascent to the top

Two slightly tired happy people!

Dougal skiing the broad ridge back down to the couloir with the Lyngen Alps stretching out to
the south.

A difficult one to judge on conditions though - meaning I decended the couloir a little early and had a pretty horrible descent. Dougal waited with some Norweigan dudes at the top for a while and had it much easier. I came out the couloir and descended a much quicker way!

I may resemble a fat, flying hamster but I confess I'm still the same 71kg that I was when I was 18yrs old. Anyway, I had never taken off on skis before but, as they say, how hard can it be? It was surprisingly easy this time (although not on all later attempts!) as there was a nice steep slope in front of me and no wind whatsoever so a clean alpine forward launch. A brilliant flight down cutting out the bushwhacking and sloppy polenta skiing at the bottom.

No uplift on the way down really, even on the south facing cliffs to my right. Shame as it could be an amazing place to cruise around! So here it is, the view between my skis to the valley below - the car is at the right hand end of the partly frozen lake and I JUST made it in - one turn to land. Phew.

And then a quick trip up the delightful Stetinden with a jolly "Tim and Alison ridge traverse" to get a nicer line. Slidy snow on the East face though...

The ferry over to the Kafjord area for the day on the Ferry for Alison's Birthday, to ski Sorbmegaisa - a classic in the right conditions...

But we didn't have the right conditions - as the season gets to an end, the overnight freeze doesn't quite make it down to the lower mountain - meaning things were starting to move. We actually stopped less than half way up this one as were uncomfortable with the conditions - a birthday cake on a rock later we skied some soft polenta back to the car!

Alison's birthday lunch



A little visitor trying to hitch a lift to get to the sea.

Happy Birthday Alison!!

And then everything fell together - after 7 big ski days on the trot, we had some poor weather and it was also National Norweigan Day!!! Time to move in to some real accomodation (the Stigen Vertshus - reasonably priced and gperfect location) and join in with the locals and celebrate by drinking coffee and eating more cake than you can ever imagine. After a local procession through the streets of Lyndheiset, there's locals dancing and the mayor gives a speech, and then we all go to the massive sports hall and eat cake. Nice.

Ron, the English guy on the left is a football coach in his mid eighties - he was coach to the local teams in the early 80's and comes back to visit most years - a massive journey involving buses, trains, planes and automobiles. We got chatting to him and loads of others and ended up getting invited to coffee and MORE cake in the evening - obviously they all speak perfect English (we are useless) and we had a great evening!

And so we were rested and ready for two more days skiing before I headed home. Andersdaltinden, to the south, is a great peak with lots of potential but conditions were not brilliant - a big freeze higher up with broken cloud cover meant skiing wasn't going to be that great - so the perfect opportunity to fly down!!

And here's a link to the not totally brilliant take off - should have trimmed the brakes a little earlier I think! Thanks Susie for posting this and hope it's OK for me to put it in this blog! :-)

And with a light southerly it was possible to soar the local peaks for an hour before heading back to the car. And so we came to our last day in the area before I left - we retreated back to the cabin for a little fishing...

The lovely cabin, Solli, thanks to Jim and Sarah at The Polar People

...and then skied Ullstinden, only a short drive away. Some of the best views of the whole trip, amazing once again...

And let the race begin! We had discussed whether it was quicker to descend by ski or paraglider - this would all depend on the steepness and various other details - but the last chance had come. An annoying wind that wouldn't make it's mind up meant that take off was a mess (including skiing backwards and various other manoevres!) but as soon as I was off the ground Alison, International Ski Goddess, set off on the snow.

She got an advantage at first but as things flattened out I caught up, sniggering to myself as she hit the trees for the final bushwhack to the bottom! Because of some serious sink I ended up landing short of the car but ahead of Ali by about 30 seconds so who won is up to you...

Team Blue...

And so the trip was over - what an amazing spot and great team. Cheers to Dougal, Susie and Alison for a brilliant 2 weeks. I very much hope we'll be back next year. And a big thank you to our Norweigan friends who entertained us :-)

And to finish - Norway voted this spectacular thing as Norway's Ugliest Monument. And that was before these three were standing by it....