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

I’d blogged about geocaching recently and mentioned a couple of geocaches I’d logged visits to but I decided to go one step more and place a cache. There’s the remains of some old ovens just down the road in Zinal dating from the 1800′s which are next to a river, I’ve mentioned the location previously in fact. This looked like a great location for a cache so I placed one there earlier and submitted it to geocaching.com for listing and they’ve just added it to the directory.

You can see the details here : cache listing

Tags: fours a chaux | GC26B71 | geocache | geocaches | geocaching | my anniviers geocaches | Zinal

I think today was about the busiest I’ve ever seen the lift here, each time I looked out there seemed to be a queue. Fortunately I’d not intended to go skiing today so it wasn’t a big deal. Up the valley towards the glacier isn’t great conditions currently, there’s a risk of avalanches from the unsecured slopes either side and it’s not a great time to go that so we took a route I’ve used a few times down the valley. There’s a nice little route we use crossing the forest and tracking along the river for a way that’s always enjoyable.

That pile of stones is an old lime oven, apparently last used around 1880 there’s the remains of several ovens and the activity along the valley floor.

Looking up there (right) at the Garde de Bordon (3310m) or actually the small peak on the ridge leading to Garde de Bordon itself, as far as I know it doesn’t have a name. There’s a volume of snow to come down of the ridge though yet unless they decide to bomb it from a helicopter which they occasionally do.

Looking up the valley at Mont Durand (left) and the Besso (right).

Tags: fours a chaux | GC26B71 | Raquettes | snowshoeing | snowshoes | Switzerland snowshoeing | Zinal