Dwight Peck's personal Web site

Monts de Bière 2010

If there's any snow left at all, we'll find it.

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.

5 April 2010, we've never seen so little snow left on the Jura hillsides so early in the springtime, so we're fleeing up to the top of the ridgeline and calling up a reliable old favorite, the Monts de Bière from the Col du Marchairuz. Where on a sunny day, everyone naturally clomps out along the same marked paths, like a church processional.

Once we're off the marked paths into the forest we can violate virgin snow impuniously, but now as we're approaching up to Mont Bière we can't avoid the tracks of similar enthusiasts.

Mont de Bière per se

The cowshed at the top of the meadow, just below the 1530m ridge behind it.

Grand Cunay to the north

The shed at Mont de Bière and its cisterne

The shed at Mont de Bière and its cisterne bis

The shed at Mont de Bière and its cisterne ter -- we're proceeding southeast up over the ridge and down the other side

Young Marlowe Peck camped just over there in midwinter, when she was a kid, and insisted on keeping the good sleepingbag all night and not trading off for the K-Mart summer bag every few hours or so.

The farm at Mont de Bière Devant, as we're marching down from a little 1529m ridge above it

We're just shimmering down through the little cliffline behind the farm to go and visit the commemorative flagpole.

Mont de Bière Devant, 5 April 2010

The commemorative flagpole at 1520m

And surprise! An excellent new tourist bench and scenic orientation panel, demonstrating once again that there is such a thing as progress in human affairs.

The view of Lausanne (behind the tree on the left) and the far end of Lake Geneva

A very fine bench, which deserves to be sat on, and orientation panel, which will help to orientate.

The orientation panel, erected in 2009 by the "Team of the Flag" thanks to the support of numerous donors (including, do notice, the military training ground at Bière). The Team of the Flag are named on the plaque pasted on the side of the flagpole, but I can't recall that, in perhaps eighty visits here, I've ever seen a flag waving proudly from that pole. Just the pole.

The view northwards towards Grand Cunay

The farm in a fleeting burst of sunlight

Lovely solid bench, flagpole, table d'orientation

A bench that cries out for testing. Yes, solid.

The city of Geneva at the end of the lake

La Dôle to the southwest. We'll go on home now and see what's in the fridge if anything.

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