Dents du Midi

A few weekends ago, I hiked up the Dents du Midi with a group of kids. The Dents du Midi is the highest peak in this canton (Vaud) of Switzerland. In Leysin, we stare at it across the valley everyday. We had 17 kids and a mountain guide with us. We left early Saturday morning and spent the day hiking to the mountain hut. We stopped along the way to do a little rock climbing and eventually arrived at the mountain hut nestled in the mountain range. Spent the night at the hut. Due to some rain that day (snow at high elevation) we were unable to summit the following day. However, we did end up hiking for 9 hours that day and trekked to the Dents du Midi refuge. We were also able to trek across a glacier with our guide which was pretty amazing. You'll find a group shot of us at the crevasse. The total trek was 22 km and took 14 hours over the course of 2 days.
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Riondaz and Mont D'Or

Check out the video of the hike...LIVE!
The picture of me sitting in the clouds next to the Leysin sign is on top of Riondaz in Leysin in mid September. The clouds rolled in when we got to the top. The following day, I took a day long hike from Leysin up to Mont D'Or with a larger group of colleagues which is where the rest of the shots were taken. It was a blue bird day.

Biking

Here's a few random shots from the 125km ride I did a few weeks ago. Started in Leysin, biked down and across the valley to Monthey, climbed up the mountain range and into France. Then descended into Evian, France and entered back into Switzerland and finally back to Leysin.

Bike Touring France

We departed Leysin on July 31st with our bikes, minimal clothing and some camping gear. Our journey began near Nice, France where we biked for 6 days before hopping a train to Fresne, France (just north of Dijon). From Fresne, we biked 5 days all the way back to Leysin. It was 11 consecutive days of riding and camping in France. We covered 700 km en velo. Here are some of the shots from along the way.

Tour de France - Annecy

The last stage of the Tour that I saw was the time trial in Annecy. France. After riding back from the Col to Leysin, we drove to Annecy and camped out after watching the time trial. We actually did a team time trial run the day of the Tour after it was finished. We picked up a Norwegian dude on the route and he rode with us. The five of us took turns with the front pull and made it around the time trial loop in one hour 17 minutes. Contador did it in 47 minutes. Pictures of our sunset time trial ride are soon to come so stay tuned for those. The picture below is our 23:00 dinner after the sunset time trial with a sprint finish. We were too tired to go down into the town for food so we scavenged all the food from the cars and made do with that. Notice, we're picnicing in the road....some crazy Australians who were clueless about camping, parked their car in our campsite and we had nowhere else to sit and eat but the road.

Tour de France - Col St. Bernard

The day after the Verbier stage, I rode from Verbier to Col Grand St. Bernard...a 60 km ride. Martigny up to the Col was a 25+ km ride that ended in a 6km climb at a 12% grade and was considered an HC climb by the Tour...the most difficult. This was my favorite stage of the tour. The Col is right on the Swiss/Italian border so I spent the night in Italy. You can see a night shot of our hotel below as well as a group shot at our Italian dinner. The view out the window was the view from our hotel room. Check out the picture of the switchbacking road. That's where the riders made their descent.