A Weekend in the Vosges

While we wait for the Winter to arrive to Western Europe, Spring is on the way. This is becoming "The Year Without Winter". With no time to go any further, we headed for the Vosges in search of some snow.

Check the video impression of this trip on YouTube.

 Saturday, 22nd of February: A Nordic Ski Walking Tour to Le Petit Ballon (1272m)

After a long drive and a short night in Colmar, we drove up the Munster valley to Sondernach with the purpose of reaching Le Petit Ballon from there. Surely there must be some snow on the North-West side of this hill. In better winters, we have even done it on alpine skis.

Although we couldn't see any snow from the car park, we took the Nordic skis and up we went. The path goes first through the village of Landersbach, than steeply though the forest and opens up on the summit slopes at the Ried farm (960m). Snow? Nothing, zero, nada, zilch!

Petit Ballon summit. Where is the snow gone?

After a break in front of the hut of the Amis de la Nature, we walked back down, discussing the possibilities of ski tours around here. If there was any snow, that is.

The undulating ridge to Grothkopf would have been a delight on Nordic skis.

The NW descent via the ondulating ridge would have been great on Nordic skis. As would have been the gentle descending path through the Breitenbach forest and Lendersen.

Another interesting possibility would have been the South descent to the Guebwiller valley, where our hotel for the night was. Like this we had to drive around more than 40 km to end about five km from the Petit Ballon summit.

Sunday, 23rd of February: Grand Ballon (1424m). Snow at Last!

It seemed that if we wanted to find some snow we would have to go higher. So on Sunday we planned to go to the Grand Ballon. At a modest 1424m it is nevertheless as high as you can get in the Vosges. In order to stack our chances of finding snow we approached from the North, with Monument Brun (513m) as the starting point. This time we did not bother with skis; just put on the hiking boots and strapped some snowshoes to our backpacks.

On the ascent we got slightly lost in forest paths, which had the advantage of leading us to rarely visited corners where we came across a group of deer and a pair of steinbok. It is not so often that you come across these elegant animals in the Vosges.

Eventually on the open slopes above the Gustiberg farm (978m) there was snow enough to justify using snowshoes. Also here we have memories of past descents on alpine skis. The bright sunshine and the fresh snow finally provided some proper winter feeling.

Approaching Le Grand Ballon. Finally the feeling of winter.

On the way down we took the route via the Col de Haag, the Lac du Ballon, and the beautiful Seebach waterfalls.

Snow or no snow, it is always pleasant to be out on the hills.

A Ski Tour in Schwarzwald

For the unfortunate people trying to eke out a living in desolate Western Europe this has been a miserable winter so far.  While the Southern Alps are getting record levels of snow, further north we are getting rain, wind, and floods. Why do all the good things have to go to the South?
In desperation, we tried to get some ski touring in Schwarzwald. Breath-taking powder runs down untouched snow we did not get. But we still managed to have three days of fun outdoors.
On Friday, we did a modest tour to a diminutive hill off well the beaten-track (Hornle 1187m). Nice weather, but not a lot of snow. Still great fun.

Neither deep, nor steep, but good fun.

We reserved Saturday for the best tour of the trip: the Schwarzwald "Haute Route". This includes the three highest hills in the Schwarzwald: Feldberg (1493m), Seebuck (1448m), and Herzogenhorn (1417m). In these crowded mountains, the tour includes a little help from ski-lifts and some descents via groomed runs. It is also quite crowded.
On Sunday we switched to Nordic skis and did a 18km round tour, mostly on the loipe, except the bit to go again to the top of Hornle, this time by the even less steep side.
Here is a little video of the trip.