A mere snowstorm? Blizzard? HA! As if that was going to stop our fearless and intrepid band on our great mountain hut adventure.   (OK, so I did have to change the venue so we’d be safe, but that doesn’t sound so dramatic) and dramatic it certainly was. March 2017, Ali and Jos know what it’s all about, Chris has some idea, Julie thinks we are having an evening meal at a mountain restaurant, Lesley still has to work out which snowshoe goes on which foot.

So here we are the night before, Julie, Jos, Ali, Chris and Lesley, having paid close attention to the avalanche briefing, now packing up, preparing for all eventualities. Julie took a nice big hairbrush, Ali took a ton of food, and I took…snowy.

And waiting for the train the next morning: the sun is shining, the sky is blue, but do we look just a wee bit apprehensive?

A glorious walk up to the half frozen waterfall of Berard, across the river and up to the lovely lunch spot of Les Granges, looking across to the mountains of le Tour, down into Switzerland and back up to the Chamonix mountains with the Dent du Geant just peeking out.

We basked and congratulated ourselves on choosing such an auspicious day. Onwards and some good way up the big climb to the meadows we have a quick halt to fuel up and wrap up: the wind is up, the sky is getting rather grey and the snow’s coming in. But we make it to the warm welcome of Loriaz hut, Julie with the help of Jos singing Good King Wenceslas, and the snow was indeed deep and getting deeper. As the blizzard raged during our scrumptious dinner, more concern was expressed about getting through the snow to the loo in the night that any real worry about how we would get home in the morning. Oh, the priorities of ladies over 50!  As some of us found, wading around in our hut crocs, that snow was getting very deep indeed by 2.00 am.

We made it back and lived to pop the required champagne cork, now honouring the shelf of corks. A memorable adventure and such a great gang, thanks for your enthusiasm and joy in the face of, well, snow. And Snowy.