I chose a differrent area of the French Alps this year for my snowshoeing trip. The Ecrins is a national park west of the Vanoise, about 2 hours south of Grenoble.
I flew from London to Lyon, only Diego didn’t make the flight. He ended up flying to Geneva, so I drove the rental car from Lyon and met him there. Luckily this gave me time to go and visit Chris, Junko, and the twins…
Chris, Diego, and I were together the next day, staying in the very friendly Gite l’Aventure in the small village of Pisancon. Our host, Fabien, cooked wonderful meals each evening, and, helped by Angele. We were not alone in the gite; there was a very lively group of sixty-something friends, who took to singing loud soungs each evening over dinner.
The weather was tricky. We had rain near the gite, but heavy snow at higher altitude.
Our weekend in Yamagata was a great success. Kanako, Yukiko, Isabelle, Arika and Renald joined me for 3 days of snowshoeing. We drove up on Friday night, arriving just before 2 am. Okuyama-san roused us early next morning for hot breakfast, and we then set off for our first snowshoe adventure.
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My last IAC trip before I leave Japan will be to Yamagata, in the north-east of Japan. We are staying at Pole Pole, deep in the mountains near the Japan Sea coast. We went there in December for the New Year holiday, and had a wonderful time.
Photos from December.
I took Bill and four friends to Yatsugatake for snowshoeing during his visit.
We stayed at the “Owl” lodge, “Fukuro-no-yado”、and spent two days snowshoeing up high on the top of Yatsugatake.
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Meakan-dake is a mountain in Eastern Hokkaido. We went by snowshoe from the car park at the hot spring and headed straight to the top. However, the last part near the top on the northern side is too steep for snowshoes, so we went around to the south, and then climbed from there. There is a fabulou 360 degrees panorama from the top.
On the way down, we took too long in the deep snow, so it was dark when we got to the lake. Stay on the path on the northern side of this lake.
Photos of our trip.
GPS tracks:
Mapsource GDB file
GPX file
