Dwight Peck's personal website

Winter 2009-2010

Our first full year of Obama disappointments

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.

The Tearoom de la Plage

If there's any snow left at all, we'll find it.

The winter of 2009-2010, what with one distraction and another, nearly got right by us. It's the 28th of March and all mud.

Our guide informs us that snowshoes are not even helpful anymore -- it's all gone. There's nothing left.

And it looks as if he's right. So far.

We're stopping in at the Tearoom de la Plage ("tearoom on the beach") just to get out of the rain for a bit.
And then we're getting on with it.

Fancy a barbecue?

No.

The snow is just about knee-deep, and we're floundering catastrophically, flopping full length into the mush all over the place, postholing every tenth step and despairing of ever getting out of it again.

So next time, April Fool's Day . . . snowshoes on.

The Tearoom de la Plage, 1 April 2010

The Tearoom de la Plage sits on a clifftop at about 1300m, looking out over Lake Geneva (Lac Léman) and supplying a BBQ grill and implements and picnic tables rain or shine

The posters on the wall explain, besides the good forestry practices in the neighborhood, that we're now on the Sentier du Coq hiking trail from the village of Marchissy (821m) up to its communal pastures at the Perroude de Marchissy (1428m), as well as on one of the new NatuRando nature/cultural hiking routes.

Lake Geneva and the barbecue grill

The village of Longirod below us, and Thonon and Yvoire in France across the way

The city of Lausanne to our left

The city of Geneva to our right

And us right here

We're congratulating ourselves for having brought along snowshoes this time.

The farm of Les Echadex (1365m)

The farm of Les Echadex, as we go off the other way, with a wonderful glistering sunlit drifting of snow coming down on us

The pastures of Les Echadex are narrow and extremely long

Very extremely long

A shed in a clearing at 1352m, that heralds our passage out of the forest . . . onto more meadows of Les Echadex.

The shed at 1352m in a burst of sunlight

Lake Geneva again

Sun's out, a gentle downhill, we're working on our tan.

The trailhead. Several people tried to push their cars a bit higher, but failed as we knew they would.

Perhaps next week we'll get the old Volkswagen another 200 metres farther up the road.

In the meantime, Dieter's been awaiting us patiently and snuggling down into the mud.

The Tearoom again

The next day, 2 April 2010, and back to the Tearoom by a more circuitous route. Up over that thing.

Level for a ways, to get round the cliffy parts

The ancient road up to the pastures, a ramp up through the cliffs

We're at the top of the roughly 1300m cliffline that runs the length of the Jura in these parts

A glance at Lake Geneva before we pass above the cliffs

A forestry road thoughtfully drilled through the steep hillsides

And now we're back at the Tearoom de la Plage, how fortuitous.

Lake Geneva from the Tearoom

The village of Longirod

The Leysin towers in the distance (those two little dark things left of centre), Tour de Mayen on the left, Tour d'Aï on the right, the Diablerets looming behind them. (I saw a Tour d'Aï brand of cheese in a supermarket in Monthey last weekend, made in Leysin and selling for about twice the price of similar cheeses -- CHF 29/kg -- with a picture on the label of Tour de Mayen.)

We knew we could count on Dieter to wait for us in the mud.

Feedback and suggestions are welcome if positive, resented if negative, . All rights reserved, all wrongs avenged. Posted 9 April 2010, revised 25 October 2014.

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