SnowSlider – Blogging From the mountains by ise

This is basically a route in the new CAS guide for Jura-Fribourg-Vaud, the guide has it as a “T4″ which is supposed to be fairly serious.

But, I’d forgotten the detail of the write-up so after a couple of hours I was beginning to think they’d got it wrong and it was just a stroll. A nice stroll though, a few hundred metres climb into high alpine meadows and an enjoyable stop at a refuge for a drink followed by a picnic lunch in a small valley.

It’s not far from Villars which is pretty popular in summer so there were a few people around. In fact, Villars is very popular in the all year round and there’s a lot of building going on, it’s a popular area for foreigners to buy property in, the Vaud canton has a relaxed permit system for foreign buyers and there’s a reasonable size ski area with a modern lift system, the two downsides are that obviously it’s busy and the (piste) skiing is pretty dull and uninspiring in fact very similar to the portes du soleil in may ways and like the portes du soleil all the more popular for that dullness and crowding.

The high pastures though are idyllic although that’s an overused word in Switzerand probably. The route takes you through a high valley (above) where I saw this large herd of cows enjoying the cooler grazing at this height.

After thinking the route was all but over it suddenly shoots up over a col with an oddly difficult few hundred metres of climbing then an airy traverse round the mountain before diving steeply through the trees and returning to where I’d left the car.

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