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.
Unsuccessful attempt at Mont Tendre
A brilliantly fine day in mid-October
We're passing the Druchaux farm (1551m) on a brilliant day, bright sun and crisply warm, 15 October in the most perfect October we've seen in a long time (weather-wise, anyway). We started from the north end of the Pré de St-Livres, where the dirt road past the farm is open from the first of October until the snow closes it.
We're bound for Mont Tendre, in the southwestern Swiss Jura mountains, and this is the southwestern end of the long summit ridge.
There is an unmarked path along the 'Les Rochettes' eastern side of the summit ridge, but we've just seen hikers coming down it, so naturally we've decided to bushwhack straight up onto the ridge from this end of it instead.
Along the summit ridge, France is in the background, the Chalet de Yens is at the bottom of the slope, and our guide for today is pausing to let us catch up.
We continue along the striated folds of the summit ridge, along ancient stone walls now in disrepair.
We've inadvertently got corralled, so our guide hastens to correct that.
A couple of solitary trees on the next not-the-real-summit-yet; the tree on the left marks the vicinity of a very large limestone hole in the mountain.
That's the large hole.
We're passing the Chalet de Yens below. The long-distance hiking trail the Chemin des Crêtes passes by the chalet and angles up to the real summit of Mont Tendre. The town of Le Sentier in the Vallée de Joux is back behind the trees a ways.
There's the real summit of Mont Tendre, with its summit pylon at 1679m . . . and other things moving about on top of it.
They're hikers, and a lot of them, possibly in organized groups, possibly with picnic lunches including wine, possibly singing celebratory hiking songs.
.
And some of them are coming this way.
Perhaps all of them are coming this way now. The basic problem is that all of this fine weather summons people out of the house, and here they are.
There are more of them circling around above us. We need to get out of here; they will certainly disturb our meditations.
There are plenty of places on Mont Tendre where people don't normally go . . .
. . . like the place we've always called the 'valley of dead trees'.
Dead trees
More people, festive people, even here at the tiny tin hut perched halfway down the rockband at 1600m.
Another limestone hole near the tiny tin hut
We're galloping down a long platformy shelf below the Druchaux farm and overlooking the forbidding Creux d'Enfer de Druchaux down on the left.
And passing the little refuge at the southern end of the forbidding Creux d'Enfer de Druchaux. Soon back to the car, back to Nyon, and (in my case) onto the train to Ollon.
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All rights reserved, all wrongs avenged. Posted 11 November 2017. 
