Snowshoe hikes for more farm photos, February 2006

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.

A round-up of new farm pix, 11 February 2006

Today we're after Perroude du Vaud

I missed it last weekend, when the sun let me down, but now -- I'm back! Joe, too!

We've set out from the top of the village of Marchissy at 880m, and we're vitamin-powering up through the forest, until, at about 1080m, Joe gets a telephone call and goes searching through his pack to find the telephone. A few moments lost there, no problem.

Here we've broken out of the forest onto a meadow in the Bois de la Gaye, at about 1110m, perhaps the only open meadow in this region that doesn't have a farm building in the middle of it. That's Joe there, taking a telephone call.

We're still working our way upward, and here we're passing over a forest track at about 1180m, looking for a way up that doesn't involve dense thickets. That's Joe there, taking a telephone call.

Two hours from our rather late start, we burst out of the forest into the sun at the long meadows of Chenevières-to-Fornets (1220m), and prepare, with no delay, to leap up into the cliffy forests above us on the right.

Up we go

Dr Pirri seeks the least snowshoeable patches of the forest to walk about in.

The hours drag on, and we still haven't got there. Here's where the Chemin des Crêtes passes through on its way to Le Planet (1370m).

Joe explains that the strange vibrating chimey sort of sound is just the telephone going off, but we're not going to answer it this time.

The narrator playing the jackanapes with his shadow.

The farm of Perroude du Vaud (1371m) -- this time we made it. We'll circle it a few times and snap lots of pics with our new Fujifilm Z1 5.1 megapixel camera that was on sale at the Interdiscount.

Joe at the Perroude du Vaud, 11 February 2006.

Perroude du Vaud (more here)

Joe, at the Perroude du Vaud, taking a telephone call.

The narrator doesn't own a cell telephone, doesn't know what "SMS" means, uses his fixed-line telephone twice a month, and hikes with no modern interruptions (except shortness of breath).

Passing by La Grillette in the moonshine

More farm photos: next day, it's Les Frasses above Longirod

A little misstep crossing a stone wall in loose snow

Les Frasses (1244m) above Longirod, 12 February 2006

The shed at La Reguéla meadow, 1149m.

Jura snowshoeing

Snow camping