Winter is upon us!

Winter, and the year’s end holidays are coming up fast once again, and we hope you all have had a great year in the outdoors. November is always a nice, quiet time for us in Chamonix, as we enjoy the peace of the off-season valley, recover from the busy summer, and make plans for the coming months. Today, a wet and rainy day, reminds us that there is snow piling up in the mountains, and it’s time to tune up the skis and get ready for our first day back on the slopes.

2012 highlights

We rang in the new year with a return to Aconcagua, after about a decade away. The mountain remains beautiful, the environment much cleaner than we remember it despite more crowds, thanks to stricter controls of human waste and other efforts on the part of the National Park. Though freakishly heavy snowfalls turned us back on our summit day due to really unusual avalanche hazard, we did enjoy getting back to this area with a great group of people.

Moving up to Camp 1 on Aconcagua. January 2012

Ski-wise, we had our “revenge” last winter, as the Alps had a huge snow season in contrast to the previous one. In addition to various off-piste outings and a few days of ice climbing near home, we had another full line-up of late winter and early spring ski mountaineering tours. We repeated our trip to the Queyras, with great snow once more, and also two Chamonix to Zermatt Haute Routes. We got back to the Ortler, and the Bernese Oberland as well as fitting in an exploration to a new (to us) area, the Albula Traverse from Saint Moritz to Davos. We are offering a trip there this year by the way, details below.

After hanging up our skis, we returned to Peru and made another serious and nearly successful attempt on Chopicalqui! We did get good climbing done on our other peaks, Urus, Ishinca and Tocllaraju.

Chopicalqui, Peru, From High Camp. June 2012

Back in the Alps, our summer season was quite busy. Mark got in some big and challenging routes, climbing with quite a few old friends as well as new. Kathy repeated her Chamonix to Zermatt glacier trek and also did some great climbing and trekking with families, some good introductory climbs, as well as Mont Blanc and a variety of peaks with some folks back in the Alps after time away.

We ended our summer season with a few days of rock climbing in the Calanques, the limestone fiord and headland region of the French Mediterranean coast, where we were joined by a couple of old friends.

See the sidebar above and left for trip reports and lots and lots of photos of this last year's climbs and treks!

Jim on the Trient Plateau. August 2012

Chamonix off-piste

We will be back from our yearly U.S. visit and available for off-piste or ice guiding around the second week in January. Let us know if you would like to come over and discover what our part of the Alps has to offer. More info.

Waterfall ice

Join us for waterfall ice climbing in Cogne or on the cliffs surrounding the Argentière Glacier. And if conditions are good, the high peaks near the Aiguille du Midi and the Grands Montets can also offer some chilly fun. Info here.

Alps treks and climbs - Summer 2013

Next year's summer guiding schedule is already virtually all booked up!

Kathy has space available on her Chamonix to Zermatt Glacier Trek July 14-20 (4 spaces available), and on her Bernese Oberland Trek July 31-August 5 (7 spaces available), with the Wildstrubel climb add-on, August 6-8 (3 spaces available).

Please be in touch to see what dates we still have available for private Alps guiding. Essentially we’re down to early season (late June and first week in July for Mark) and September. Go to our Booking Levels page to see what dates we still have left.

Finally, we’d love to see you in the Calanques in October, if you want a Fall get-away that includes Mediterranean sea-cliff climbing in the sun and great French cuisine!

Michele in Les Calanques, October 2012

Keep in touch!

As always we love to hear from you. Let us know if you have any plans, hopes or ideas for a future climb, trek or ski tour, or if you would like to book some quality mountain time in 2013. Thank you as always for your interest and your participation in these far-flung endeavors, and we hope to see you in the hills.

Best Wishes for 2013

Kathy and Mark