Mont Chevreuil
5th October 2008
Mont Chevreuil is an abandoned ski station near to Château-d’Oex and was once on the same lift pass. The lift runs up from Rossiniere, or used to as it’s not run all the time I’ve lived here despite what some UK ski web sites appear to think according to their “in depth” guides to Château-d’Oex. Anyway, we had left the car in the Col des Mosses at La Lecherette and walked in to Mont Chevreuil from there. It’s a great time of year for walking and the conditions alter so much, earlier in the week I was in shirtsleeves enjoying the sunshine in Kandersteg and today we’re in early season snow. We’d thrown snow chains and snow shoes into the car as a precaution but didn’t really need them. You could have snow shoed at the top and the higher parts of the descent would have been fun but there’s not enough snow yet to need this kind of kit.
We’re getting some great views over to nearby mountains, that’s Pic Chausy on the left and the on the right we’re looking at the top of Château-d’Oex.
Last time we were here it was awful visibility and raining heavily which made navigation awkward, there’s a preconception that navigation is easier here than back in the UK based on an erroneous assumption that the paint blobs on every second rock around tourist areas are nation wide. In fact there’s only a lot of these markers where foreign tourists are likely to get lost as we residents are perfectly capable of finding our way around without them and without maps showing every wall or fence! Today was a case in point, there’s the odd signpost but the snow’s covered any track there might have been so it’s down to measuring distances and taking bearings to be precise.
It’s funny to see the valley so green below still, it’s likely most of this snow will melt now though. They’ll be some be some accumulation over 2000m or 3000m but at this height I expect it to melt although it could be surprising.
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October 6th, 2008 at Mon, 06 Oct 2008 01:33:12 +0200
Amazing! Wish we’d been in snow with the sun out. But we did pretty good ourselves today