Beginnings of Winter

This winter is not getting to speed. Hardly any snow, skiing competitions being cancelled or moved to Scandinavia... not good.
Finally this week it started to snow on the hills. Not a lot, and anyway we can't spare more than the weekend, so we decided to just head for the nearest hills (600 km away) and see what we get.
Friday night at a standard Ibis hotel in Colmar and in the morning drove up Munster valley. The hope was to go up the Petit Ballon, but there was hardly any snow to be seen. So we continued to the end of the valley, to Mittlach. Here it looked a bit more wintery, but nothing to write home about. We decided to take only snowshoes on our packs and head towards the Schnepfenried. The navigation on the forest paths was a bit tricky, especially since the loggers often leave piles of discarded branches obscuring the path. It would have been easier to take the forest roads, certainly if we had been on skis.

Le Kastelberg and the Gazon du Faing from the south. Wintery feel but not enough snow for skiing.

Eventually we made it to the Deybach farm and "auberge" where we had a break. We descended back to Mittlach, again using a mix of roads and forest paths. We arrived back to the Mittlach without even using the snowshoes.

After spending the night at the charming hotel Val de Neige, we headed to the other side of the valley to follow the Wormsa trail.

Start of the Wormsa trail.

A big, fallen tree blocking the path caused some difficulties, as we had to abandon the path and scramble on steep, forested terrain, but eventually we rejoined the trail and were rewarded with a beautiful path, mostly following waterfalls.

One of several bridges over the waterfalls.

The trail finishes at the beautiful Schiessroth lake where we had a break in a new shelter made by the local Club Vosgien.

Schiessroth lake.

New shelter by the Schissroth lake. The local Club Vosgien are taking good care of this place.

From there was getting to late to go all the way up to the Hohneck, so we opted to take the easy road towards Le Gaschney, with the aim of exploring future tours on skis. With the same purpose we descended by the East side of the valley, using skiable roads that lead to Metzeral or Mittlach.

A pleasant weekend in the Winter landscape but we badly need more snow.