Monday 12 September 2011

The end of my 20th Anniversary and a great year for Trekking in the Alps

I've just finished  my last week, and reached the end of a superb year of work. Both winter and summer seasons were full, with some great groups, wonderful hiking and lots of celebration of those 20 years.
The last two weeks were in Italy. The first one was my Italian Summits week when we achieved 6 summits in 6 days! Then I had a week in the Dolomites based in Cortina d'Ampezzo which proved to be a perfect base for discovering those stunning limestone mountains.

 







 The photos tell it all really, we've had some really good hikes and enjoyed generally excellent weather. Whilst we didn't see masses of wildlife, on both trips we got really good sightings later in the week: ibex and chamois were abundant in the Gran Paradiso National Park, and in the Dolomites we were lucky to see a sizeable herd of chamois and lots of very fat marmots.

Now it's time for me to catch up on admin, take some holiday and to organise next year - the snowshoeing weeks are already filling up and the summer treks are taking shape. If it's anything like as good as this year I'll be happy.