Winter 2001-2002 in a corner of the Jura

Dwight Peck's personal website

All of life's victims who've entered into their second half-century doubtless have noticed that life gathers speed and passes us by much more quickly than once it did.

So, too, the winter of 2001-2002 has zipped right on by, pell-mell. Pretty much a good thing, too. But here are a few photos of whatever can still be salvaged from all that havoc.

You will not find this interesting 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.

Autumn frolics

As autumn begins stealthily to become winter, Profs. Pirri and Durham join the narrator on one of many outings to Mont Tendre in the Jura and nearby peaks. We're anxiously awaiting the arrival of serious snow.


Mont Tendre in search of snow, November 2001	Chalet à Roch Dessus, November 2001

Dent de Jaman with Dan and Joe, November 2001	Dr Pirri scrambling up the fronts of Mont Sala and Mont Pelé, December 2001

Only a wee little bit of snow at Crêt de la Neuve, 23 December	Marlowe hopping stone walls, Christmas visit 2001

Ah, winter finally arrives. Ice all over the shopfloor on the lakeside park in Nyon, Switzerland, where the narrator takes his lunch every day.

. . . takes his lunch, on days like today, in the car with the heater on.

And thus commences the snowshoeing season in the Jura, just after Christmas 2001, with lots and lots of good fun to be had.

Springtime hiking 2002


Grand Cunay in search of angels, New Year's Day 2002	Grand Cunay again, seeking more angels, 23 February

Hikers falling into holes in the forest floor, 26 January 2002	Our old friend Carmen's visit with entourage, 2 February 2002

Pointe de Poêle Chaud in a white-out, 2 March 2002	Mont Tendre amid military shrapnel, 16 March 2002

Additional springtime hikes, sometimes very warm days	May snowstorms, lovely

Dwight and a collection of Carmen's friends, 2 February 2002

Grand Cunay in grey weather, 23 February 2002

Additional May snowshoeing in welcome unseasonable snowstorms

The Big Sport for Winter 2001-2002 was searching all about the Jura for holes, limestone holes, like this one . . .

and a brief catalogue of "Holes of the Jura in Winter" is available here.

A frequent companion in the search for big limestone holes was Prof Pirri (above), newly wintering in Switzerland these days rather than Lebanon, which is welcome to most of us.

Not all of the intense snowshoeing was entirely without mishap (below) . . .

L. Durham (above) and J. Pirri (below) tangle up their snowshoes and hit the snowpack. (See antecedents.)

But we're all agreed that winter 2001-2002, despite global warming, was not the worst year we've ever seen in terms of winter fun for the semi-privileged leisure-oriented working classes of the developed world in the last years of its decline and dissolution.

Meanwhile, the narrator seized the occasion of a pause in snowfall to lay on a cheap LinkSys network in order to keep his contributions to the health of the world's wetlands squishing along smoothly.

And forget about hiking -- in March 2002, Mme Durham became a genuine Swissie, a citizen of the greatest country in the world ('greatest' in moral, aesthetic, cultural, and defensive military terms -- prizes for brute offensive military force still go to a handful of crude, less enlightened nations, and that's okay).

Wait, here's another entrant in the Search for Winter Holes . . .

. . . another excellent Jura hole, BUT now well past the winter and into late spring. Thanks for finding this one for us, Prof. Pirri, but it doesn't count.

WINTER'S OVER. Time to move on, recover what we can from all of this, and face the somewhat shrouded future with as much hardihood as we can muster in these fallen Republican-dominated times.

Well, not so bad so far! In July 2002, Prof Berman of the Greater Boston Area popped over for a month and short-roped us over from Switzerland into the Italian side of the Alps, and up and down there for a while, and then back again near Zermatt into Switzerland, and that's the subject of the next instalment of this lengthy chronicle of human folly.

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