Jeff and Jan Moore

This was Johnny’s first trip to the Alps, and to Europe in general, but most importantly to the Alps. So we decided to go on a long ski tour in the heart of the mountains and hopefully make it to the top of a few of those high peaks. Our itinerary:

• Day 1: Zurich to Jungfraujoch by train; sleep at Monchjoch hut a short ski from the Jungfraujoch.
• Day 2: Climb the Monch, ski to Konkordiaplatz, stay at Konkordia hut.
• Day 3: Konkordia hut to Finsteraarhorn hut, stay at Finsteraarhorn hut.
• Day 4: Climb the Gross Wannenhorn, stay at Finsteraarhorn hut.
• Day 5: Climb the Wyssnollen, stay at Finsteraarhorn hut.
• Day 6: Finsteraarhorn hut to Hollandia hut, stay at Hollandia hut.
• Day 7: Ski home down the Loetschental to Fafleralp and the train.

Here’s also a rough map of our route showing the summits and huts: Map.

The pics are more or less in chronological order.

Another bonus shot, and a bunch of nice photos from Johnny:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loopperu/sets/72157619920395487/

Finally, I put together some vids that Johnny took into a short movie:

A touring day from Jeff on Vimeo.

Jeff already posted some photos from our Tuscany trip with my folks, but I wanted to add a few more from their spring visit. We went to the French part of CH and were impressed with the castle between the shores of Lake Geneva and the Alps dating from 1150, Chateau de Chillon. We had great weather and the springtime flowers did not disappoint. They went to Barcelona on their own and spent the rest of their trip traveling and hanging out with us in Switzerland. My mom cooked some great dinners and my dad even shined my shoes. It was a great visit!

As part of the Goethals’ round-Europe adventure, we all spent a long weekend in Tuscany – Montepulciano and the surrounding region.  We drove down and back in two marathon days (50mpg diesel), and spent the other two touring hill towns, and Sienna, and agritourismos, and wine and olive oil, and lots of good food, and on and on.

Here’s also a picture of the Rhein Falls in northern Switzerland:  pic

Nobody throws an Easter party like the Spanish, and what could be better than where the Spanish meet the Moor’s: Granada – pomegranate, grenade, Easter!

The first night we spent in Basel, in order to catch a cheap flight in the morning. Basel was nice to visit finally, sit and have dinner by the river at night, ride some silly river ferry. Allergy season is officially on here, and I was a bit miserable, but not as miserable as I would be later when my allergies turned out to be a genuine cold.

Then off to Spain. We flew in to the town of Alicante, which is a seaside resort serviced by all the major discount air carriers, and spent a few hours there waiting for the bus by the beach. The bus ride which we thought would be maybe 2 hours, turned out to be 5, but was fun after all – a scenic trip. I maintain that Spain looks a LOT like Arizona – I felt like I was driving through Globe.

Easter in Granada is one parade after the other, with thousands of tourists packing the streets, and then the bars, and then the breakfast joints, you get the point. Granada is spectacular, with white washed walls and outlandish churches, and a red fortress on the hill overlooking it all. Our Alhambra visit was definitely the highlight, especially seeing the Islamic sections.

Our Easter trip to Granada looked something like this:

Day 14 on skis may be my last day at the resort for this year. Winter is over. We’ve had such a good season I have been spoiled, but today I remembered what spring skiing is all about: ice and slush. Anyway, it wasn’t a bad day by any means, I had my picture taken with an elderly Japanese tourist, saw guys skiing uphill with some sort of wing-shaped kite, and skiing is cool too. Returned home to sun and open windows.

A photo from today at the Uetliberg in Zurich.

Last weekend was time for our long awaited super spa and ski Luekerbad / Gemmi pass vacation. It’s a weekend trip we had been planning for a while but waited for good weather. The trip went like this: Saturday we went by train to Leukerbad, a mountain village in the Wallis surrounded by 1000m high rock walls. Leukerbad is famous for its natural thermal pools – there are a few in town but we chose the Lindner Alpentherme (the pic below is not mine) with a nice indoor / outdoor pool. This was a good afternoon. But the nice dinner we had planned fell apart when I got a migraine 5 minutes after ordering our food and we had to leave. Luckily they packed our food to go, so Jan could enjoy her dinner in the hotel room before I had to go to sleep at 8:30. Magical.

The next day was supposed to be an easy ski part of the way home over Gemmi pass to Kandersteg (where we were last weekend). But the route I choose was not easy and the wind was howling, blowing stinging ice in our faces, so we had to retreat back down to the normal walking route. This latter route was mostly flat and more fun, but we were already tired having skied up and down for a few hours. Some hours later we hoofed it in to the Sunnbuel tram for the short ride down to Kandersteg and eventually home.

by ski – ha, another skiing related post. Jan and I went for an easy ski yesterday in the Gasterntal – which is the deep the valley in the header image of this blog. This was mostly just a walk around a flat snowy meadow, but was especially nice because we had it all to ourselves. I likened it to skiing through Yosemite valley, but with nobody else around.

…know what those title words mean? it doesn’t matter anyway, lets just say I went skiing again. Maybe you’re getting bored of this I went skiing here, I went skiing there blog… but I suggest you just try to think of it as winter ‘site seeing’ – I try to go to new places after all. This time it was the Loetschental, a peaceful small valley in the Wallis. I went with Niklas (a friend from ETH now in Lausanne) and his co-worker; Jan was not feeling up to a new day of skiing after rocking it so hard last week. It was a sunny day with 30cm new snow but a mighty wind. The deep new snow offered both intended and unintended face shots of powder.

Last week we were visited by Chachi and Patti from the US, and by Jon and Kasia from the UK. For this super high school reunion for 30 year olds we decided on a ski trip to the French Vallais, at the town of Anzere. Im not much for text right now, so here are the pics.  Needless to say, it was a good time.

Not to one-up the better post below, but here are 3 photos from yesterday’s trip to Randa. I also made another short movie of the helicopter flight down; so if you liked the last one and were hoping for a pointless repeat, you’re in luck. Thats all for now.

Randa – going down from Jeff on Vimeo.