Baku, Azerbaijan

Socar/Cape rope access training area at Sangachal training centre , Baku.

Baku is hosting the Eurovision song contest 2012. The building opposite is just completed ready for the show! Industrial Rope Access with "climbing" workers who can work on awkward to reach structures play an important role in the construction, repair and maintenance of these modern structures!

SOCAR is the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic and CAPE is an UK based industrial service company who are a well known provider of numerous trades, such as Scaffolding, Rope Access , Blasting and Painting!

The Flame Towers are nearing completion.

Gran Paridiso

A nice ski tour over the past days in Italy.

Bee, Julian and Alison on the summit.

Ski mountaineering

Alison on the ladders at Pas De Chevres

Cab des Dix

Be and Alison on the summit of Rossablanche

Piste and off piste days! Chamonix , Mont Blanc

Around 10 cms of new snow this morning on Grand Montets, sometimes visibilty was superb but often it was not so great! However the snow is so forgiving and ace that all in all its been a rather pleasant day! Be and Alison at Grand Montets.

Morning time and visibility was pretty good!

Col de Nargo

Climbed a few enjoyable pitches with Cathy as we drove back to the airport today... back to ski mountaineering tomorrow!

Cathy on "Africa," a nice three pitch climb.

Andorran days!

Cathy models a Mountain Equipment Beenie!

Expedition arrangments http://www.mazenoridge.com/ are going well but it was nice to take a break from logistics and get out into the hills. Cathy took me to a local Via Ferrata. The snow line had crept lower this morning so while we would prefer to be rock climbing, we needed to find something that we could keep moving on and avoid freezing fingers!

An interesting Haute Route

Well, back in Chamonix this afternoon after descending from the Vignettes hut in bad conditions early this morning. My friend Benoit Profit a guide from Grenoble was there with his group and in the same proverbial boat!!! We shared navigation legs and spacing out our two groups helped a lot with "mapping the terrain" in the almost white out conditions. We have done OK though and my group are happy enough as we have had a tough, challenging trip with lots of navigation but also some amazing turns, fine snow and some good weather windows which gave inspiring views.

Approaching the Pas de Chat. ( We were so pleased just how good the weather turned out to be that day, but snow conditions were interesting!)

On a wonderful summit!

Haute Route, Chamonix to Zermatt

Spent last night at the Refuge Agentiere, and woke up to a few centimeteres of new snow this morning. Decided to try and push on to the Trient hut via the Col du Passon, but once we were up there conditions were quite poor with bad viz and continuing snow fall so with compass in hand we descended to the village of Le Tour. Later today we will drive around to Le Chable, spend the night there and weather permitting we hope to push on to the Praflurie hut for tomorrow night!

The old glacier trike now lives on the roof of the Argentier hut!

Vallee Blanche, Chamonix

Its been an excellent day on the VB.