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 Dwight
Peck's personal Web site
Summer
2007 -- An
accidental walk up Mont Pelé
Mont
Pelé in the Swiss Jura
You
may not find this tangibly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a
good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught
up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go. 
We're
out for a little walk in nice weather, 17 June 2007, to see what there is to be
seen. We're leaving the car at the meadow of Les Pralets (1265m, map below), and
that's the farm at Les Pralets, in the general direction we're going in today.
That's
Mont Sâla at 1511m above us to the northwest. But today we're wandering
farther off to the left. 
The
idea has already occurred to us that we might totter on past Les Pralets, with
its excellent rustic buvette/restaurant in both summer and winter (for the hardiest
crosscountry skiers, 9km from the nearest trailhead) and go up the meadow on the
far left and work our way towards the big lump on the horizon, Mont Pelé
at 1532m.
Yellow
things on the trees as we bushwhack up through the forest a ways. 
Dr
Pirri starts to become more interested in the project as soon as the ground begins
to steepen. 
And
still more so as the ground begins to steepen a lot -- awkward going with two
arms needed to fend off swarms of flies, another arm in a plaster cast, and another
two needed for hanging onto things while scrambling upwards.
Dr
Pirri propelling himself upward amidst the clouds of flies. Maps are useless now,
but up is up and we persist. 
It
takes an enormous amount of mental discipline to ensure that, with every little
slip and fall, you don't instinctively reach out and catch yourself with your
free arm. Even if it's broken and has got a cast on it. The profanity ringing
through the forest proves that Dr Pirri does not have that discipline.
A
likely break through the cliffs, not hard to scramble up . . . 
.
. . even while keeping your cast out of harm's way. 
As
if by a GPS miracle, without the slightest idea of where in the world we were,
we've emerged from the clouds of flies precisely at the top of Mont Pelé
(1532m), and here Dr Pirri is gazing wistfully over towards La Dôle to the
southwest.
A
glance back down the forests on the southeast, front side of Mont Pelé. 
The
narrator on Mont Pelé, preparing to go home by way of the Cemetery of the
Burgundians and the Combe des Begnines. Lake Geneva is in the background.
Some
of the lovely countryside in the area 
A
super limestone hole on Mont Pelé, just northwest of the summit on the
path out to Le Croue 
Dr
Pirri admiring yellow trees 
Yellow
tree flowers 
Yellow
tree flowers are all over these forests today -- by mid-July they were all gone.
Not the trees, just the yellow things. 
Dr
Pirri subsumed by yellowness. 
 Feedback
and suggestions are welcome if positive, resented if negative, Dwight Peck at
 .
All rights reserved, all wrongs avenged. Posted 22 September 2007.
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