AllWorldSkiing
Ski touring and ski mountaineering holidays – way off piste. If you love being in the mountains on skis, you like adventure and discovering new places then you may find something of interest here. Check out the Upcoming Trips page to see what’s happening; Past Trips to see what’s happened.
Day after day it chucked it down. Bucketing. Rain of Biblical proportions pouring off the pavements and down the streets. Cloud to lake level a metre higher than the norm. There was weeping and much gnashing of teeth. No-one had seen anything like it – the effect of El Niño on top of global warming resulting in perhaps the greatest redistribution of heat and moisture ever. The southern cone of South America is always wetter in El Niño years, but this was off the scale. Bariloche ...
“Everyone wants to ski Lofoten” said the young local guide with a wall-to-wall smile. I hadn’t realised how popular a destination it had become perhaps due to me not following any social media. It’s popular but as soon as the obvious classics are skied there are endless objectives just waiting for fresh tracks. 23 wasn’t the best year for conditions due to bizarre weather patterns (becoming more of a theme) but there was enough snow for the first team to have a blast. Unfortunately for ...
Tonight’s topic of dinner conversation with the group of highly inspirational septuagenarians I am skiing with? They are discussing which of the latest ATK pin bindings to fit to their new skis. Tucking into Trachanás, a filling shepherd’s staple made from sundried wheat flower, eggs and milk after a ski ascent of Greece’s second highest mountain, these are not your average seventy-year old’s. To keep doing this stuff the team need lighter kit. The first day in the heat on Olympus was ...
Wanda Rutkiewicz, Voytek Kurtyka and Jerzy Kukuczka are the first three Polish greats that come to mind when I think of the golden years of Himalayan climbing. There are many more. They were hard, strong, determined, and talented and they all started out climbing in the Tatras. I knew nothing about the massif until I saw it for myself on this ski trip. The heroic Poles and their exploits were not in my mind as we began skiing the rounded and wooded western Tatras. Their playground, the ...
‘There is more to see for those who listen’ stated the banner flying by the cobbled ramp up to the so-called Dracula’s castle at Bran. I’ve no idea why these words of wisdom were there but they made me smile. They also reminded me of Harley’s father’s adage ‘The wise old owl sat in an oak, the more he saw the less he spoke, the less he spoke the more he heard. Why can’t we all be like that wise old bird’. Anyway. What about the skiing? We started off at Balea lake in the Fagarash ...
Жолунар шыдыр болсу. ’May your journey be smooth’. I had spotted the road sign through frosted van windows earlier in the day. It was -13°C. Fast forward to midday and our smart looking Mercedes Sprinter 4 X 4 had front nearside wheel and disc lying on the ground, axle on a piston jack. Wheel bearings finished. Road travel in places such as Kyrgyzstan is often anything but smooth. In a pre-trip email Gordon had asked whether he should bring his big PHD puffer jacket. ‘Good idea for ...
‘Throw the ropes!’, ‘Come on!’ came the command. The team turned and looked at the hapless skipper, eyebrows raised, as the yacht drifted closer to the floating dock. There were no ‘ropes’ ready. They had not been prepared despite two members of the team having mentioned mooring warps on the approach. I’m fortunate have done many sail ski trips now and seen a range of skippers with differing levels of competence, from the pinnacle of professionalism to this guy. Svalbard and the island ...
Our time in Greenland was dominated by three deep Atlantic low-pressure zones which funnelled very strong NNE winds down the coast accompanied by abundant precipitation. It was unseasonably warm, so this fell as rain, which is no fun on a snow camping, ski experience. The first low delayed our departure from Matt and Helen’s island of comfort in Kulusuk. We eventually made it out using an eclectic mix of waterborne and terrestrial craft. Tents were pitched and polar bear protocol rigidly ...
The snow in Troms this month of May was the best I skied in the entire 2022 ski season. From 1 – 8 May it was full-on winter with abundant cold freshies. Perhaps because of the cold wild weather nobody else was out? It was just great. Most of our skiing was from the tiny settlement of Reinfjord which is reached by coastal ferry from Skjervøy. There we were based in the warm and comfortable house belonging to our host Oddmund Hansen. Oddmund had pretty much built the place from scratch, ...
The 70 metre, 2424 ton Jon Kjartansson pelagic trawler dominated the little port of Eskifjordur – generators growling and lights ablaze. Fascinated, we asked Berglind if she could arrange a visit. Jon Kjartansson was in from fishing for blue whiting south of the Faroe Islands and if I remember rightly she had landed 800 tonnes for processing. Her foray had burnt 140 000 litres of her 482 000 litre diesel capacity. She was about to set sail and first stop was Tórshavn to top up the ...
We had been worried about the snow cover for our planned traverse but with some slight changes and a little walking it was fine. There was enough snow, but it wasn’t snow or skiing as one imagines. Old, crusty, bumpy, and rutted, it was at least consistent in its teeth chattering challenge. On 16 March we awoke to an ominous, orange sky with the brightness turned to low. Large plumes of sand rising over the deserts of Algeria were being blown to Europe by strong northerly winds. The ...
The old shepherd wasn’t happy. A torrent of Greek. ‘What was Giorgos trying to do? Kill us all?’ Pointing up at the cloud covered summits of Psiloritis, then turning, gesticulating down the valley he didn’t approve of our ski plans! Giorgos said the right things so the shepherd finally stepped aside allowing us to drive on up to the snow line. Skinning, the clouds parted and we had a brilliant day on Crete’s highest mountain. Sleeping on the way home I was woken by a horrible bumping, ...
February 2022 and Covid was still a big thing. We were all extremely keen to ski and had planned to go to Romania, but nobody wanted to land in Bucharest at the peak of Omicron. There was enough snow in the Dolomites, the forecast was good and the deal clincher – the ever-full Garni Raetia had rooms for the week. Kate and Diego are among the finest hosts one could imagine, faultlessly running their family hotel with good natured smiles. We had a fun time on and off the mountain skiing in ...
This was Val Maira with three but ended up as Andermatt and Val Bedretto with one. No snow in VM and then Covid hit two of the team. David and I lodged in a small, remote, family run hotel with a friendly lady as our host. We enjoyed comfortable and spacious accommodation but dinner was a challenge! The best meal we had was at 2575m in the Cristallina Hut. We were the only guests!
This long weekend of Chamonix day tours has been running for years. January can often be the best month for snow quality and with Italy and Switzerland close by there is invariably something fun to do.
Many things were not possible during the difficult months of Covid. Allworldskiing couldn’t switch to making PPE, adapt to work from home or sell exercise bikes or computer equipment so everything came to a stop. The mountains were still there though so with local friends and family we made the most of them, skiing as much as we could.
Crete? You’re going skiing in Crete? I didn’t know there was any skiing in Crete. Is there snow? I’ve encountered such incredulity with other destinations but Crete seems to really puzzle folks. There is indeed snow on the mountainous island of Crete. Not every year, but pretty reliably and what’s more, the limestone peaks were unquestionably formed by the Greek Gods with ski touring in mind. The highlight of our week long visit was a traverse of the Lefki Ori. We also enjoyed ...
What do Uzbekistan and Liechtenstein have in common? They are the only two doubly landlocked countries in the world. We had skied in one so we felt duty bound to visit the other. Europe’s fourth smallest country, the Principality of Liechtenstein has an area of about 160 square kilometres and one ski resort, Malbun. From there we managed one very nice day tour before we were pushed south yet again due to the weather and winds in the northern Alps. We ended up in the Pass dal Güglia ...
Thanks to Wolfgang we now know the difference between apfelstrudel and topfenstrudel and a lot about Bavarian culture and history. We heard about his ancestors, the development of Garmisch-Partenkirchen and of the winter Olympics there in 1936; we sampled seven different Wiess biers, worked our way through the local specialties at the delightful Bräustüberl and we even managed to ski tour in Bavaria! The weather and avalanche conditions in the northern Alps resulted in us driving a total ...
Matsuo Basho switched sword for pen and became Japan’s most famous poet. He embarked on four pilgrimages including one challenging journey on foot through Tohoku, northern Honshu in the late 17thcentury. The poetic work he penned after this walk, Oku no Hosomichi romanticised the beauty of Tohoku’s natural environment and has inspired many to follow in his footsteps. On our quest for low density powder our plan was to roughly follow Basho’s route but in reverse. In the recent past the ...
When I was a youngster one of my favourite books was The Children’s Picture Atlas in Colour. Mine was published by Hamlyn in 1975, price £2.95. The chapter on the Soviet Union shows smiling Young Pioneers, endless fields of wheat and industrial plants with enormous chimneys clouding the skies with smoke. The text speaks of great efforts and sacrifices, planned socialism, world class education and of the USSR challenging the United States for first place as the dominant industrial power. ...
Japanese night in Hamburgbukta a tiny near-perfect horseshoe of a bay in the far north west of Spitsbergen. Akiko, Kumiko and Hiro had brought the ingredients all the way from their homeland and David, the Japanese music to accompany the meal, from Manchester. Talk ranged from the pleasure of visiting and skiing in Japan to the options for a memorable day in the mountains on skis the following day. It was a great pleasure to be back sailing on Aleiga again, this time very ably skippered ...
The twentieth century art at the New Tretyakov Gallery blew me away. It’s sensational. Socialist realism masterpieces were the perfect end to twenty four hours of culture in the transformed city of Moscow, the heart of which is now tourist hell. Prior to my gallery visit the morning service at the reconstructed Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was a magnificent performance with the three mains actors, The Church, the security services and political power working seamlessly together. ...
Snow machines, mega RVs, light aircraft and helicopters are all part of the Alaskan scene. This is not BMW country. Here is the land of the mammoth pick-up truck, guns and gas station coffee. Unsurprisingly we stood out. We ski touring Europeans travelled unarmed, by people carrier and van, stopping for ‘fancy coffee’ where we could. Snow machines have pretty much a free reign and helicopters are all over the place ferrying skiers to ‘heli bomb’ the slopes. A toxic mix but we weren’t ...
Vanja and I had been in contact for many years and so it was a pleasure finally to meet and to ski in the beautiful mountains of his home country. Like many of his countrymen he’s a tall chap so it was also fun for me to be the small guy. Montenegro, I had read, has an average altitude of 1000m and 15% of the country is over 1500m. During our short visit I saw so many ski touring objectives but access to them would be the crux. We toured to Bandijerna in the heart of the Durmitor ...
Everyone in Bosnia smokes; or that’s how it seems. Our cigarette smoking hotel owner said his mother gets through four packets a day. Walk into any public place be it a restaurant, bar, café or service station and the air will be a toxic fug of tobacco smoke. Why do Bosnians have such a universal disregard for their health? Perhaps the answer is partly due to the tragic recent past? Why too is the Bosnian countryside empty; villages and small towns devoid of inhabitants? Urban ...
Mala Mojstovka was our initial objective and it came as a bit of a shock, especially to those used to cruisy skinning in the ultra-light powder of Japan. Here it was hard, icy and steep straight from the car; some wondered what they had let themselves in for. Mala M is a magnificent ski peak with extraordinary views and great run down, albeit on character building snow. The tone was set for the rest of the visit. The ladies of the Pri Martinu looked after us handsomely and with an ever ...
Seven hours to drive 250 kilometres of potholed tarmac from Ushhorod, four hours by bus then ten by train followed by another two by bus from Cherkasy, ten hours by car from Kiev. Telemark family bonds are strong so although getting to Mykulychyn for the festival was no easy affair no complaints were heard from The Ukraine Telemark Team. Our invite came from a chance encounter with Misha, Gleb and friends on a flight to the Georgian Caucasus in 2016. Fast forward three years to Mykulychyn ...
Iran ranks near the top of any adventurous ski tourers wish list. Historically and culturally a ski trip here in on a par with Greece. What’s more, like the Greeks the Iranians one meets whilst travelling are universally friendly and most welcoming. We went to the Azeri north-western part of Iran which has a real ethnic and linguistic mix and is rarely visited by westerners. The Sahand mountains and Iran’s third highest, 4 811m Mt Sabalan are well suited to ski touring though we had ...
We entered The Wort Hotel, Jackson Hole and that classic line from the 1980 John Landis film The Blues Brothers came to mind, « Oh, We got both kinds, we got, country and western ». After the show Anto and David were talking guitars with the band. ‘Where should we go now?’…. ‘Well the Willie Waldman Project is playing at the Rose & Thorn’…… Sticky carpets, padded plastic vinyl furnishings, 8% IPA and four exceptional musicians having a blast until 3am. Wow. What a show and what a ...
Many of us firmly believe that when possible an espresso should be taken before ski touring. We were at the bar doing just that. Alessandro has superb coffee and as we delighted in the strong, silky smooth nectar he shared his thoughts on La Scienza del caffé. Firstly, the glass of water is to cleanse the palate. It should not be drunk after the coffee unless the latter is bad! One then enjoys the aftertaste for a long time. The golden rule is never, never, never should sugar be ...
This was billed as a pre-Bolivia acclimatisation trip but as Bolivia was already taking up a large chunk of valuable vacation time the group was a small, but very select one. Three days of superb spring ski touring which brought back happy memories of past visits to the high peaks of the Valais.
‘Oh, il y a de la neige Inshallah, il y a de la neige Inshallah, Inshallah’. That’s all I’ve ever had from Mohamed in the twenty years that I’ve known him. Calling Morocco for an update on conditions always gives the same response. This, my sixth trip, was no exception; however on this occasion God did not will it. He had not been generous and what snow was there was brick hard and icy; too dangerous for skinning and skiing. We had to face it – there was no skiing in Morocco. ...
Breakfast was laid out with military precision with each room allocated a table. At 7am the team entered and chaos reigned. Room 51 sat at table 43, one of whose occupants ate at the table for room 56. 53 sat with 32 at table 45. The Breakfast Dominatrix was not amused and boy did we know it. Our status sank to unimaginable depths when she caught the Senior Member making an illegal sandwich from the breakfast buffet. We were in Corvara but the snow wasn’t so we only managed one day in ...
I’ve rented vehicles in many countries over the years. Invariably there are bad surprises and in fact I can’t think of a positive. Sometimes an upgrade might happen but usually I’m dealing with bald tires, dubious excess charges or outright dishonesty. The vans Francesco and I were offered in Rome looked as if they had been used for stock car racing. ‘We’re professionals’ we said, ‘offering a professional service. We can’t carry our customers in these’. After much toing and froing we ...
I’ve a day in Sendai and I feel awful. I’ve picked up a flu bug from one of the team and the last couple of days have required ‘additional effort’. Trail breaking in deep snow with a fever really isn’t fun. Down town Sendai has nothing to offer but shops and I have a strong dislike for shopping. There’s hardly a foreigner in sight contradicting the article that I have just read on tourist numbers. Apparently the Japanese Government would like to reach 40 million foreign visitors a year ...
Nobody had booked a beach holiday so we couldn’t go to Crete. Fortunately Plan B was a good one as snow was bountiful on the Greek mainland. An hour or so on my very smart phone from Japan was pretty much all it took to make the changes – we were off on a Greek road trip. The mountains were empty and even sites of huge historical interest such as the Parthenon and Delphi were thankfully free of their high season crowds. The locals were out in force at the Parnassos ski area though ...
We had tried to ski in Corsica before but ended up in the Georgian Caucasus, not because I’m poor at geography or got lost but because there was no snow on the Île de Beauté. In 2018 there was the most snow for thirty years and just prior to our arrival 15cm fell overnight on the beach at Ajaccio. The three ski areas, Val d’Ese, Ghisoni Capanelle and Haut Asco were packed with locals at weekends. So we had plenty of snow but that gave us a higher avalanche risk to deal with, made ...
Déjà vu. Thunder, lightning and pouring rain. We were back for our second attempt at Etna having had the same terrible weather for the entire time we were here last year. At least it was obvious that skiing was not an option so we visited a near-deserted Taormina in the driving rain. At least there were no other tourists. The stalls packed with tat did not have a single customer. Day 2. Snow chains on the vans the skins on skis. Fresh snow, fresh tracks and a beckoning summit. ...
The Moors were looking for water when they came to the valleys of the Sierra Nevada. They found it in abundance and settled in Granada and in the mountain villages of this southerly massif. 1307 years after the Muslim invasion of the Iberian Peninsula a small group of ski tourers arrived in Güejar Sierra, one of those villages. They too were looking for water though not for drinking or irrigating crops for they drank beer and wine and ate in fine restaurants. They came looking for ...
Bolivia is a land of vivid colour, the variety and intensity of which is instantly remarkable upon arrival at El Alto. Whether it is deep blue sky, the snow-capped peaks or the rainbow costumes of the 26 de Mayo Fiesta del Gran Poder, all is clear and bright. Not an obvious ski destination, Bolivia did have the highest ski lift in the world at 5379m Chacaltaya. It was also the closest to the Equator. Sadly climate change has removed the glacier there and the lifts have not worked in 10 ...
What a place for a road trip. It seems like every bend, every dip on the South Island roads reveals a view to die for. Stops are frequent and nature’s beauty observed in silent reflection. It’s not surprising that Chinese tourists from the likes of Chongqing or Zhengzhou are now here in their multitudes. Quite a change from when I was last here in 2015. Popular places such as Wanaka are now transforming at breakneck speed. Development is everywhere and property prices have grown ...
There was a lot of snow in Finnmark this year which was unusual for young folk but as it used to be in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. Due to the severity of the winter the reindeer were hungry and low in the valleys. We had to give them a wide berth as a mother, if disturbed, will abandon its calf never to return. Reindeer avoidance was thus the main criterion in deciding where to ski, the snow and weather being excellent. Fuelled by sandwiches made with home baked bread we enjoyed gentle days in ...
Julia, Anna and Sasha did a wonderful job of feeding us for the nine days we spent on the mountain. High Camp porridge was a particular delight and Alpine hut staff could learn a thing or two about cooking from the Elbrus ladies. World weather is becoming more unsettled and traditional patterns are no longer reliable. The mountains of the Caucasus were dry until spring when poor weather at last brought snow. Bad luck for those who went before us but we hit it lucky. It snowed continually ...
The first rumble. Difficult to know the exact cause through a wool hat, two hoods and with the wind as it was. Perhaps a plane? Minutes later came the second, closer and much louder. Thunder. We’d skinned just 400m in the pouring rain and we were now going to have to about turn and quickly. We were totally soaked and I think everyone was secretly relieved! We reached the safety of the tiny café at the base of the pistes just in time to watch an impressive electrical storm which ...
