Mont Tendre, 2001-2002

Dwight Peck's personal website

The Jura's answer to the Alps

Mont Tendre, one of only a few mountains in the southwestern Jura that sticks up above treeline, is, in its own way, special.

Pre-digital photos

Along the wind-scoured ridgeline in March or April 2001. When the wind sweeps off the North Atlantic over the northwest coast of France, Mont Tendre is the first sizable object it finds in its way.

A decorative shrub on the Mont Tendre ridgeline, March 2001.

A collapsed cornice along the southwest approach to the summit, February 2001.

A passerby seeking a decent place for a cup of coffee, February 2001.

Neat cornices on the ridgeline just southwest of the Mont Tendre summit, March 2001.

A small party of hikers making its way up the cornices just southwest of Mont Tendre, late in the day, March 2001.

A few more cornices, just where the broken cliffs that run all along the front side of the Mont Tendre ridgeline descend into the forest, April 2001.

Mr Peck views a row of crude snowcaves abandoned by a hardy group of highschool campers the previous weekend, March 2000.

Not forgetting to look about for any loose change that may have fallen out of someone's pockets.

Mr Chamois, surprised late in the day near the Druchaux farm on the approach to Mont Tendre, saunters off to dinner in the nearby Creux d'Enfer, oblivious to hidden hikers.

Scruffy ole chamois, oblivious to our grinning head poked up over a cliff on the approach to Mont Tendre, saunters by at 20 meters distance.

Winter 2001-2002

Mont Tendre trailhead, depending upon how far one can get one's car up the Route des Montagnes on the ice.

Mont Tendre in bleak and windblown mode, January 2002.

30 March 2002: Mr J. J. Pirri, of J. J. Pirri fame, inspects some of the more interesting features of Mont Tendre on a grey late afternoon.

The narrator, on 30 March 2002, inspects army droppings along the front of Mont Tendre. Neatly gathered into little piles of shrapnel by the young soldiers before they went on home to German Switzerland.