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.

The pre-alpine area of Switzerland is one of our favourite places to snow shoe, the terrain is just fantastic, rolling alpine hills, wide open slopes, forest tracks and we generally have the mountain all to ourselves!

Later in the winter it’s possible to walk out onto the frozen lake and join local people for a stroll on the ice.

A full day from Zinal on snow shoes to visit the caves at the base of the Zinal glacier. This is a high alpine trek into a remote area in spectacular scenery to see a most remarkable natural sight.