Diarmuid Collins

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Went on a bike ride with Damo today. It was long and tough. 80km from sea level to 1000m. My heart was in the 80-90% zone (zone 4) more than any other zone

Still it was good fun and good exercise.

Weather forecast for the Alps looks good for the start of the week. A relatively large dump is due until Tuesday with the freezing line quite low. Looking good for next weekend

So Isola2000 and Auron are supposed to be opening this weekend, however no snow has fallen in over 2 weeks. On the website they have removed a number of webcams, I guess to hide the true state of the conditions. In any case I think I will be skipping it this year, unlike last year when we made the opening day on the 14th of December (midweek!)

Isola today:

The good news is that the Haute Alps are forecast to get another big dump Sunday
La Thuile Snow Forecast

Chamonix Snow Forecast

I started using a new website for logging my runs and cycles. Motionbased is a Garmin supported website that allows you to directly upload data from Garmin GPS units for analysis. Here are some recent outings

• 50km cycles up north of Nice on Saturday morning with Tamas
• Lunchtime run on the promenade in Cagnes Sur Mer
• Cycle to Italian border from Nice with Damo

Heart rate info is logged along with distance, time, speed and elevation, thanks to the Garmin Forerunner 305

Pouring rain in Nice this morning and probably a lot of last night judging by the amount of rain on the road. Unfortunately it’s raining in Isola2000 also, washing away the bit of snow that is there.

Forecast is for more rain tomorrow and clearing for the weekend.

The good news is that Cervinia is looking a lot better

Spent a weekend in Paris last month and got some pics:

And finally the pictures from Caitriona & Brian’s wedding:

Pictures from hikes on Cime du Diable and Cime du Mont Claiper uploaded.

Added a gallery from an easy Sunday hike to St Agnes, overlooking Menton

And from the weekend in Apricale:

Wrecked after a weekend of hiking. On Saturday did a hike from La Madone de Fenestre to Col de Fenestre and across to Lac de Trecolpas. The hike took about 6 hours (970m climbed) and was not too stressful

On Sunday I went back to La Madone de Fenestre to do a “classic” AD mountaineering route. Pierre Axel left Nice at 9am to begin our climb at 10:50. The approach took about 1hour 20mins to climb the 500m to the base of the climb.

For the next 7 hours we climbed the 7 pitches to the summit. We were quite slow as it was my first mountaineering route and PA’s first in 3 years. We summited at 7:45 and were back at the car at 22:10. The climb was quite “airy” but not too difficult. However the exposure added a lot to the climbing.