Just had the great pleasure to take a hut tour around the Val d’Anniviers with a group of “explorer scouts” from the UK. For those of my generation explorer scouts are what we used to call venture scouts and are a mixed-gender organisation. This was a group of 12 explorers and two of their own leaders.

People watching the news from the UK around the world have wondered what’s happening with young people there so I’d like to say what great ambassadors for the UK and the Scout movement the explorer group were and how much I enjoyed our tour!

It’s been cracking weather, some storms in the evening but hot and sunny during the day. In fact it’s been hot down in the valley so being up at 2500-3000m is the best place to be.

That’s the ridge of the Sex de Marinda which we made an ascent of for a picnic lunch, we’ve left most of our sacks on the Basset de Lona which is why nearly everyone (apart from me) is travelling light there. You can see the Lac Lona on that photo as well. The lake is pretty low right now, that didn’t stop the group doing a little wild swimming though. Up at the Becs de Bosson cabane we found they were short of water as their water supply had dried up. That made the night there a little more basic than normal!

There’s some Edelweiss growing on the side of the Becca de Lovégno which we climbed up for the amazing views over the Val d’Anniviers and the Val d’Hérens.

And finally, after a picnic near L’ar du Tsan (first photo) we dropped down the valley and walked in by the Vercorin bisses for our pickup.

Tags: Edelweiss | Grimentz | Hiking | hiking in Switzerland | moiry | Pas de Lona | trekking | trekking in Switzerland | Val d'Anniviers | Vercorin

It seems like an age ago but I setup a Facebook Group for people with connections to the Val D’Anniviers. The group is one of the “old format” ones in Facebook which seems to mean it’s not great on mobile amongst other things.

If the group shows any sign of life they’ll upgrade it. So I just wanted to remind people it existed and where it could be found :

Facebook Val d’Anniviers Group

Here’s a photo just for a bit of summer eye candy :

Tags: Chandolin | Facebook | Grimentz | Saint Luc | Val d'Anniviers | Vercorin | Zinal

There’s not been a huge amount of fresh snow in Zinal for little while so it’s all pretty tracked but there’s still some good skiing as always. I’d met up with David and we skied in the freeride area a little before heading to Grimentz via a nice couloir pitch. Over in Grimentz the steeper north facing couloirs were also skiing pretty well so we tried some of them before skiing down into St-Jean taking the bus back to Zinal via Grimentz.

Tags: Grimentz | ski Grimentz | Ski Zinal | Zinal