Autumn hikes -- waiting for the snow

Dwight Peck's personal website

Winter 2001-2002

The winter spent mostly looking for big holes

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.

Winter's coming on. After a last November ride up to the Chalet du Mont Tendre, it's time to give our old friend Humvee a good bath and put him or her away for the next few months.

Joe and Lisa, going up Mont Tendre "the hard way", waiting for more snow in early November 2001

Joe taking an important phone call on Mont Tendre.

Dent de Jaman

Mr Peck and Mr Joe Pirri, following trustingly along after Mr Dan Hinckley, find the trail signs near the Station de Jaman all rimey and iced up illegibly, 10 November 2001.

The Montreux-Rochers de Naye cograil line can be seen snaking out of its tunnel on the ridge and up into the mountain tunnel to the Rochers de Naye summit. Great views down onto Lake Geneva on a clear day. Great thermals for the parapenters (hang-gliders).

Recriminations (above) about who's been knocking the beautiful ice off the pole (Joe did it,).

Mr Dan Hinckley joins the narrator at the rimey trail sign.

The Jaman Antics Troupe practicing its tap-dancing routines for a possible run on the dinner-theatre circuit in the Cleveland and Shaker Heights area.

Time to head down, lamentably, Sly Joe Pirri leads the party back into a world that seems to be getting harder and harder to go back to, don't you find?

Chalet à Roch Dessus

Prof Pirri poses before the Chalet à Roch Dessus, late November 2001. (Luckily, he's not wearing his patriotic USA suspenders today.)

The legend painted above the shuttered window says "Restore the old houses instead of building new ones". In Switzerland, that's really good advice; in the USA, only rarely does it make much sense. Why bother to restore a cheesy 60-year-old strip mall?

The narrator, in his insufferable vanity, obscures some of the best parts of the painting. Get out of the way, you presumptuous git!

Les Trois Suisses -- the Iconic Three from the small central Swiss cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwald who on the 1st of August 1291 took an oath to resist the Hapsburg's empire and win independence. Like George Washington with hoodies on.

Heraldic shields of the Canton of Vaud and the Swiss Confederation, and two more I don't recognize.

Drs. Peck and Pirri revel in the neat wall art and prepare to descend again before night tumbles in upon them in the forest. Late November 2001, the Chalet à Roch Dessus.

Monts Sâla and Pelé

Mont Sâla looming, 9 December 2001. We're headed up the front of it.

Dr Pirri gazing up at the cross on the top of Mont Sâla

Narrator keeping discreetly out of the way of a panoramic shot of the Dents du Midi in the centre.

Dr Pirri, not content simply to wait for good snow, accompanies us scrambling up the front of nearby Mont Pelé, 16 December 2001 -- better than playing canasta with the menfolk over cigars after large Sunday family lunches at the auberge down the street. But we're still awaiting some decent snow.

Where, in mid-December, is all the snow?

"Fear not, Prof. Pirri, snow is coming soon."

Soon -- soon -- we will be back upon our snowshoes once again. Buy a few magazines about celebrities to occupy your idle hours and don't fret anymore. Soon the snow will come.

The narrator on top of Mont Pelé, scanning the horizon for snow.

Cold enough it is, but no snow

Crêt de la Neuve

Crêt de la Neuve, 23 December 2001 -- only a little wee tiny bit of snow so far

At Crêt de la Neuve

Dr Pirri contemplating profundity near the Pré de Rolle, 23 December 2001

Marlowe's Christmas visit

Good snow for the Christmas season, as Ms Marlowe Peck makes her annual Yuletide visit to the old country.

Stone wall hopping in the new snow, the forest of Grande Rolat, 30 December 2001

Dr Pirri tempting fate

Stone wall hopping in the new snow, the forest of Grande Rolat, 5 January 2002

Dr Pirri parading his USA suspenders and patriotism and . . .

. . . falling straight down into a hole in the forest floor.

The year 2001, of tearful memory, ends with a hard landing for Dr Peck, captured for an unsympathetic posterity by Dr Pirri with his panorama switch set on to get the full extent of this bone-jarring misfortune from close by. Schadenfreude is the word most frequently used of friends like Dr Pirri.

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