|
 Dwight Peck's personal website
La
Berneuse
near
Leysin, Switzerland
The
lovely village of Leysin, in the Swiss Alps, sprawls at 1250m-1450m on the flank
of a range of six small limestone peaks. These little peaks are wonderful in all
seasons.
The
Leysin Six, from left, La Riondaz, La Berneuse (behind the tree), the Tour d'Aï
and Tour de Mayen in the center, the long hump of the Truex, and the Tour de Famelon
on the right.
The
very most fabulous collection of local mountains anywhere, 7km across from left
to right.
Every
Leysin downhill skier's entry destination, La Berneuse -- now with its fancy revolving
restaurant, but ca. 1979 with its homey chalet style ski station.
There
it is, the present lift station and the old restaurant, shot from Les Fers, 1981.
La
Berneuse, from La Riondaz, with Tour d'Aï and Tour de Mayen behind. The old
chalet restaurant (directly below the Mayen summit), before the fire.
A little harder to
make out in this autumn shot from the side of La Riondaz, across the Combe de
Luisset, but there it is, the doomed restaurant, shrouded in mist just under Tour
d'Ai, with the lift station to the right under Tour de Mayen.
And in winter again,
getting closer -- the old chalet restaurant and the lift station just after sundown,
about 1980.
A
less benign side of the Berneuse, a number of avalanches
in the gulley below the télécabine station a short time after ACS
staff members L. Ware and D. Peck had exited at the top and exulted in their good
fortune.
The
snow was waist-deep last evening, but it's not now. May 1983.
Here's the old
Berneuse restaurant in June 1984. The present narrator was there at 9 p.m.
on an afterdinner run on the evening of the fire, and even looked inside the locked
doors and didn't notice a thing -- at midnight the soldiers in the Hongrin valley
saw the flames, supposedly caused by cooking gear left on by the day staff. This
photo was taken the next evening, when it was manifestly too late to be of much
assistance.
So
now we've got an all-glass turning restaurant!
Descended straight
out of Star Wars. Our wonderful pre-1984 chalet was replaced by a post-modern
. . . event! As a Swiss chalet restaurant
for a convivial fondue, the Kuklos is of course a complete bust. But as performance
art, as the New Switzerland, the Snowboarding Event of the Tourist Year, the Kuklos
does have a certain kind of cold charm. (And if they could get the turning restaurant
to turn about 100 times faster, they could transform the Berneuse into a theme
park.)
|
Leysin's
beloved Allan Rankin with Marlowe Peck (left) and Dwight (right) and the turning
restaurant Kuklos, June 1997
|
The
Kuklos turning restaurant from the Bois de Prafandaz, January 2005
The
Kuklos on Berneuse, with the Tours d'Aï and Mayen behind, from near the top
of La Riondaz, January 2005
Index
of Leysin local mountain photos
from SwitzerlandMobility (http://map.schweizmobil.ch/?lang=en)
 Feedback
and suggestions are welcome if positive, resented if negative,  .
All rights reserved, all wrongs avenged. Posted 24 January 2004, revised
9 May 2008, 14 March 2014.
|
