Chilly hikes around Marchairuz, December 2005

Dwight Peck's personal website

Winter 2005-2006

Short breaks from poring over the newspapers as the Bushies implode

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.

Kristin's Christmas visit and a couple of walks in invigorating weather

There's no use just sitting round watching the telly through the holidays, as there's nothing much good on anymore anyway, and even the BBC news is sometimes not all that much fun these days.

Near the Pré d'Aubonne, chilly, 27 December 2005

So Kristin drags us away from the telly and off into the forest, 27 December 2005, across the Pré d'Aubonne near the Col du Marchairuz, hoping to get a good look at the Grande Baume.

Kristin stares at the information panel at the Grande Baume du Pré d'Aubonne -- 125 metres, not to say 410 feet, deep.

More on the Grande Baume here. But enough of that, let's carry on before our feet freeze.

Muttering about the cold, we're wending northwest through the little cliffs at about 1400m, with gelid piggies.

Kristin, when she wants to, wields a mean TSL225 plastic snowshoe.

Now that we've found out a good way up through the cliffs, it's time to get the old heart pumping and warm up a bit.

Kristin practicing her "Dick Cheney Look" to indicate who's probably going to be blamed for this extraordinary cold.

Oooof.

Returning from a bracing walk, we're passing the farm of the Pré d'Aubonne.

Back to the car, late in the day, on the Route du Marchairuz, 27 December 2005.

Dent de Vaulion, chilly, 30 December 2005

That's on a different page.

Near the Col du Marchairuz, chilly, 1 January 2006

Imperfectly recovered from a devastatingly hilarious New Year's Eve, Kristin braces for the cold not far from the Col du Marchairuz on 1 January 2006.

Progressing from the Route du Marchairuz, we're headed in distressingly deep new snow up into limestone hole-country southwest of the col, just to have a good lookround.

Kristin fairly scampering along in the forest to the south and southwest of the Col du Marchairuz, watching for great karst caverns yawning in the forest floor.

A lovely day, though a chilly one, as the snow starts blowing in a bit.

That's Valser bottled water Kristin's got there, much to be recommended, as least the fizzy kind, but it's not Evian, which is said to be just as wet and pays some of our Ramsar "outreach" bills. The main problem with bottled water (aside from all that throwaway plastic), according to WWF International, is that when the people who can afford to buy it do so, the voters' pressure is taken off the government authorities to provide drinkable tap water for all the citizens, both those who can and those who cannot afford to buy the bottled kind. In developing countries, bottled water is pretty much a necessity.

The narrator believes that sunny days in the Jura are nice, too, but these snowy ones really do excel.

Just through here

The hotel at the Col du Marchairuz seen from the southeast through the trees near nightfall, 1 January 2006.

Kristin having a good look-about for the car, which was somewhere near here when we left it.

Aahh, there's the lovely Volkswagen, "Dieter", kneedeep in snowdrifts at the side of the Route du Marchairuz, as the family vans full of kids and sleds parade past us towards Geneva at the end of a superb day. It's time for a big pizza at the Croix Verte in Nyon.

Jura snowshoeing

Snow camping