A brisk hike out to Mont Tendre
About half way out to Mont Tendre, as it turned out. But the weather was pleasant, and the views were excellent anyway.
The trailhead at Font. Froide behind the Col du Marchairuz, 25 April 2009. We were determined to push our way all the way out to Mont Tendre today, but, what with one thing and another, it's 2:30 in the afternoon, how time flies.
We're trying to hurry, but rough calculations indicate that, if we make it all the way to Mont Tendre, we won't get back here till Wednesday week.
Still vacillating between snowshoes on or off (i.e., putting them on, taking them off, putting them on, etc.), we're about to pass by the Pre de Denens farm (1367m).
Monsieur doesn't like us to put up photos of his family's farm, because he feels that they might attract litterers, so we try to keep photos of Pré de Denens to a minimum. This farm, unlike most or all of the others up here, is privately and not communally owned.
A parting of the ways. Two cross-country ski tracks still unmelted off and diverging. We'll take the snowshoes off and walk up the bare meadows, though in many places they're running with water.
Already a couple of kms out and following the packed-down cross country ski track, we're coming up to the Chalet des Combes (1488m).
We've left the Mollendruz cross-country ski track and snuck up a little gulley behind the Chalet des Combes. Look at those crocuses like a blanket on the meadow.
A lovely scene on a fine spring day, with crocuses (or croci) coming out, though we're as weak as a baby today and would love just to lie down on the meadow for a long while and soak up Vitamin D.
Road access to the Chalet des Combes comes from over the far side of the Jura ridgeline, on this paved Route des Montagnes up from Bière and St George, and we're borrowing just a bit of it to reach the Swiss Alpine Club cabin du Cunay.
We're on the famous international hiking trail the Chemin des Crêtes now, on its way towards Mont Tendre, and the Club Alpin Suisse hut is just up to the right. We're at about 1588m at this point, and (forsaking our dream of Mont Tendre) we're going to turn off back through the holey forest and improvise homeward now.
Down into the Holey Forest, just called "Les Combes". We need to leave off making career plans and reviewing our stock positions for a while and pay attention to the footing underneath.
A very beautiful forest, but it's all so up and down that it's hard to reach any firm conclusions, or footing.
This looks like a promising way forward, though. We're trying to stay high and avoid all the deep depressions, some of which don't have bottoms on them.
Now we'll settle just for anything that looks familiar.
An unavoidable downhill, but we believe that we've now got onto a known unmarked trail that will guide us safely through the jumbles.
When the snow goes, the winter gnomes retire back into the grottes, and the summer gnomes come out to flit amongst the trees, especially at night.
We're walking along with a firm gaze forward, looking down neither to the right nor to the left.
Wonderful forests -- endless opportunities for exploring about in them, because nothing and everything looks familiar.
That's the ski club of Les Brassus cabin of Grand Cunay (1543m), with by the sound of it a bunch of young lads staying over for the weekend.
You'd think we'd know this area well enough by now, but we're studying the map to find an innovative way back to the car -- something we haven't done before.
Like this, straight down about 60m of toes-grindingly steep slope, past this little waterfall spring out of the mountainside.
And then back along a farm road carved out of the hillside back towards Marchairuz
Atop the old tracks of winter walkers (including our own from weeks past), there's an intrepid skier's track from earlier today.
We didn't make it to Mont Tendre today, but it's okay.
And back to the trailhead, just minutes too late for the 6 o'clock BBC news. Life's like that. Probably no good news, anyway.
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All rights reserved, all wrongs avenged. Posted 27 April 2009.
