Gendarmes, Kita Alps, originally uploaded by julesberry2001.

Two weeks ago, we said to ourselves that if rainy season hadn't arrived, we'd go and climb the ginormous and snowy Kita Hotakadake (I'd just read Tsubakuro's blog on the subject). The weather called our bluff to such an extent that, amazingly, we couldn't think of a single reason to be lazy, and James is now a pretty patchwork of red and white, due to slapdash application of the factor 40.