Swiss Mountain Leader

Ian is a UK Mountain Leader and an International Mountain Leader (IML) Aspirant, and is a member of both BAIML (British Association of International Mountain Leaders) and ASAM (Association Suisse des Accompagnateurs en moyenne Montagne).

He leads groups and individuals in the mountains in Switzerland and further afield. In summer conditions this includes trekking and walking while in winter he leads groups snow shoeing. As a Nordic Walking Instructor he can give an added dimension to moving in the mountains and introduce clients to a simple fun exercise they can make part of their daily routine at home.

His expedition and group work takes him to Morocco, Corsica for the famed GR20 trek and the Himalayas for trekking at  very high altitude.

Ian runs the popular blog SnowSlider.net chronicling his travels in the alps and sharing his photographs with readers. You’ll find pages here describing trips we’ve made and some record of the flowers we’re seeing over the course of a year as the seasons change. Links on the top of the page and at the sides will let you look at flowers grouped by colour or the month we’re seeing them in.

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Ste-Croix is in the canton of Vaud but in the Jura range mountains on the Swiss-French border, Ste-Croix is just a few km from the French border. Despite it being local to the valley house I’ve never been over there in the winter, in fact I’ve only really been to the Jura to enjoy the sport climbing on the crags there. This was a fairly random trip on snowshoes, I’d looked at the map and had a couple of ideas for routes but we were flexible.

The best idea seemed to be to just park somewhere and head out, I only really wanted to get an idea of the terrain in the area so I’d no particular objective in mind. In the end I decided to head for the top of Mont Cochet which is a pretty small peak near the town, there’s some ski lifts below there which weren’t running today. Snow was good though, just not really enough for them to piste I think but perfect for snow shoeing.

Just a few snaps taken in forest above and around Zinal.

It’s been a little hectic recently so I’ve not posted much on here but we got a few nice pictures around Zinal yesterday. I’ve explored the forest around Mottec and Pralong before but we’d not been this way before. In fact, there was no sign of tracks anywhere and I’ve never seen tracks there before so it’s a pretty original route!