Slip Slidin' Away

I woke up about 6:30 and looked out the window. Clear skies and a face-full of glacier and mountain tops - yippee! Minutes later a big cloud was rolling up the valley threatening to kill the view so I grabbed the cameras and headed outside. The first photo below includes a bit of our building so that you can see just how close to the glacier we were. What a great location!! However - it seems that winter arrived overnight and there was a dusting of snow and ice on our initial 300m of steep downhill. We had breakfast and then hung out watching the clouds come and go for awhile. At about 8:50 we decided there was enough visibility to set out. The going was slippery and slow but we all made it down safely and were treated to watching 5 ibex near the bottom of the downhill. We had decent visibility for the rest of the day, although still some heavy cloud cover at times. We had a long traverse high up along Lac de Moiry. It is a dammed lake and is a beautiful blue colour, reminiscent of Moraine Lake. Then uphill to our 9th pass of our journey, Col de Sorebois. It still amazes me how the views change at a pass. You will have been hiking in one valley for a period of time and get used to the same set of mountains, lakes, villages, etc. seen from various angles. Then you top out at a pass, and wham - you get an eyeful of a brand new set of wonders. Today it was leaving Lac de Moiry and the Moiry Glacier & Icefall and being introduced to a new set of mountains & glaciers, dominated by the Weisshorn. Too bad it was cloudy because the picture below just doesn't do it justice. Our day today was 555m of uphill and "just" 945m of downhill. We chose to take a cablecar the last 800m or so of downhill into Zinal. It was a 7 minute ride vs what the guidebook describes as about 90 minutes of knee-jarring descent. I'll save my knees for another day, thank you very much!! We saw Jenn & Jason on the trail today and will dine with them tonight. They walked all the way down so will have earned their dinner. We've also see the Rossland 6 in town; this was their rest day. Another beautiful day out there today and looking forward to tomorrow.