The Col de la Faucille and Le Colombey de Gex

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.

At loose ends with 48 hours to kill between returning from Uganda and departing for the United Snakes of America, the narrator seized the opportunity to go to the Col de la Faucille and lose Dr Pirri. The Col de la Faucille (1320m) is one of the four mountain passes through the southwestern Swiss/French Jura mountains (with Givrine, Marchairuz, and Mollendruz) and the one that's directly overhanging the city of Geneva.

This is the aching little ski resortish thing just southwest of the Col, with skilifts up from the French town of Mijoux and transferring on up to the Petit Montrond (1533m) on the horizon above. It looks a bit like a Wild West town in the off-season -- it's 20 November 2005.

There may be better places to lose Dr Pirri but this seemed to be the most convenient one, given the shortage of time to get the job done. We've cleared out of the forest and we're somewhere just beyond Le Crosat at about 1500m.

Here's Dr Pirri still with us, gazing for a moment out from ridgeline over Lake Geneva (Lac Léman), with Geneva off to the right, and Mont Blanc on the horizon.

Ostensibly, we're headed towards Montoisey in the distance, but will probably only go as far as we need to to get the job done.

Dr Pirri is racing along towards Le Colombey de Gex (1688m), overlooking the town of Gex, in the French region of Gex, which has a "tomb" on top, but that's neither here nor there. It had earlier been agreed that we were not going to the top of Colombey de Gex, but rather around it, towards Montoisey, but with spirits irrepressible Dr Pirri may have been seduced by other summit visions.

Dr Pirri gaining ground on the Colombey de Gex as the shadows lengthen and the afternoon begins to chill down.

Here's our last view of Dr Pirri dashing along on the far side of Le Colombey, preparing to disappear.

And as the sun begins to set behind us, poof! he's gone. Nowhere to hide out here, it would seem -- just gone! As President Bush would say, "Mission Accomplished", or perhaps "How could anyone get lost in plain sight out here?"

In order to forestall any potential criticism later, we tread all about these hills for an hour or two calling out "Dr Pirri! Can you hear me?" and "Dr Pirri, that's quite enough!!" and then, as the sun retires in the west, we give up on finding Dr Pirri and head home for a cozy dinner, confident that we have covered all our bases. And that's nearly the end of the story, but . . .

. . . when we got back to the car at Faucille in the dark, we found to our surprise that -- there was Dr Pirri. It turns out that Dr Pirri had given us up for goners as well and leapt nimbly back to car. Lacking only the car keys to complete his mission.

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