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 Dwight Peck's personal website
Pointe
de Poêle Chaud, 2003-2005
A
few more photos for the bin
You
may not find this terribly 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.
16 March 2003
Up we go through the forest, and today Dr Pirri will be our guide.
We've reached the col between Pointe de Fin Château and the Pointe de Poêle Chaud, so . . .
our guide is celebrating.
The Pointe de Fin Château
Ditto
Windy on top. La Dôle is in the distance, and the Pointe de Poêle Chaud is directly behind me.
Dr Pirri and the Pointe de Poêle Chaud in the distance; we've decided we've had enough fun for one day and are starting back down now by another way.
La Dôle and the Pointe de Poêle Chaud from the Pointe de Fin Château, 2003
16 May
2004
It's
May 2004, and the snow's nearly gone now on the southern
sides of the mountain. We're back at the Pointe de Poêle Chaud for a brisk
direttissima march straight up the forests of the northwest side of the
summit.
Out
of the forests now and persisting upwards.
A glance
back at the Pointe de Fin Château to the northeast as we hurl ourselves
upward with a kind of reckless abandon.
A
last bit to the radio station at the top.
From
the top of Poêle Chaud, La Dôle to the southwest.
La
Dôle, 16 May 2004.
Sneaking
down the southeast side, Pointe de Fin Château in the background.
Another
look at La Dôle, with the recently restored ancient stone wall in front of it.
And
another, May 2004. God, that was fun!
The Pointe de Fin Château
1 May
2005
Rendezvous
with destiny -- it's a year later, 1 May 2005, and we're back for another brisk
march to the Pointe de Poêle Chaud, once again lunging up through the nearly
trackless forests from the north.
Whilst clawing our way up through the overgrown
35%-slope forests just above the "F" in Fin Château on the map
above, declaiming loudly about American politics and doing our Scott McClellan
imitations, we heard a heavily-Swissified voice from the dense thickets calling
out in English "Are you on a path there?" Well, we were not, and neither
were they -- a very good-natured but rueful Swiss couple who had read their map
wrongly and pushed their mountain bikes straight up through 200 vertical meters
of dense undergrowth in search of the path they still hoped to find somewhere
up there.
We'd
be more likely to have found a bicycle in a refrigerator than on the forested
side of the Pointe de Fin Château.
That's
the Pointe de Fin Château in the centre, and our wandering cyclists were
down in the forest to the left, and may be there still.
Dr Pirri, on the fast track to Poêle Chaud
Long hillsides up Poêle Chaud from the north
Dr
Pirri is once again on his way up the last stretch to the radio station at the
top of Point de Poêle Chaud.
-- Are you coming?
The last push to the top
The end is in sight. No, not yet.
Now the top is in sight. Telltale
hints of the amateur radio relay station La Glutte not far off, 1 May 2005.
We're
here, time for lunch. We found a chocolate bar in the bottom of an old backpack,
though the sell-by date read 1997.
The nearby point of La Barillette, with its Swisscom communication tower, overlooking Lake Geneva and France on the far side.
La Glutte 'gatoring on us
Dr
Pirri heading home again, 1 May 2005.
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 1 February 2005, revised 16 November 2013.
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