Dwight Peck's personal website

Mont Tendre

The Jura's answer to the Alps


Leaving Leysin, Switzerland, in the Swiss Alps, for whatever good or necessary reasons, and going to anywhere else in the world, is traumatic and debilitating. If you have had to move to Secaucus, New Jersey, you will probably be searching about for a non-splashy way to kill yourself within two to three months. But if you've had to move to the Canton of Vaud, to a village near the Jura Mountains, you will quickly develop an affection for Mont Tendre.

It gets cold up here (not cold by North American standards, but cold enough). This is the summit ridge near sundown in December 1997.

And that's France, looking towards the Mediterranean, if you can believe it, under all that fog.

And, over the other way, that's the city of Geneva in late afternoon. Similarly under the fog.

This is looking north towards Bern, Basle, Freiburg, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Trondheim, and the North Pole, similarly under the fog. The artifice on the right is the summit pylon.

Superb, though chilly, early evening. 

Looking down towards Lake Geneva (Lac Leman), under the fog, and the three-sided cowshed just under Mont Tendre's summit rocks. 

And as the sun set over the foggy lake, and over foggy France in the west, we set off at a gentle snowshoey trot down, down, down into the fog . . .

Passing the higher farms in our headlong rush for our car before the nighttime gelled in upon us. 


Why is Mont Tendre so valued by former Alpine-dwellers in this corner of the world? Answer: Trees. That is to say, NO Trees. Mont Tendre and La Dôle are the only peaks on the southwestern end of the Swiss Jura Mountains that stick out of the tree line! And La Dôle has got Geneva's Cointrin Aeroport radar installations stuck all over the top of it, so there we are, back up on top of Mont Tendre. Like La Chasseral and the Weissenberg in the northeastern Jura, it's a little mountain that -- in the right light, in the right weather -- often feels like a mountain.

More photos of Mont Tendre
First snowy hike of 2013/2014 (3 November)
Through fog and snow to Mont Tendre, June 2013
Sun and fun on Mont Tendre on skis, March 2005
More photos of Mont Tendre in the winter of 2003-2004
More photos of Mont Tendre, 2001-2002
Snowshoeing on Mont Tendre, January 2000
Introductory photos of Mont Tendre in 1997
Some summer photos of Mont Tendre for a change, July 2002
Trees of Mont Tendre

Feedback and suggestions are welcome if positive, resented if negative, . All rights reserved, all wrongs avenged. Posted 24 December 1999, revised 28 June 2012.


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