Jura Traverse #3
31st January 2010
After two days on the GTJ (Grande Traversée du Jura français) I stopped in the small border village of La Cure. From here my plan was to hit the TJS (Traversée du Jura Suisse) and move north up the Jura range on the Swiss side. I can really recommend the hotel in La Cure, Hotel Arbez Franco-Suisse which I though was excellent, so good I’ll probably go back sometime.
One option, and the one I’d recommend, would be to take that train to the next village and use the marked trails to get to the Col du Marchairuz where I was aiming to spend the next night. But, I’d decided to ski backcountry into the end of the ski area and then cut into the Col du Marchairuz from there. This obviously is somewhat challenging, you need to cross quite a big distance outside of marked trails and being able to do that safely, it goes without saying you shouldn’t do that alone.
So I set off on my own picking up a raquette track for the first few km.
Mostly my plan worked pretty well, I’d expected the terrain to get difficult in the forest though, probably the last things you want to ski through the forest on are a long pair of nordic skis without steel edges but it was what I had. I’d planned to basically cut over the peak and drop onto a small track marked on my map. I was gambling that was used for access in the summer, by quad bikes or 4WD to a couple of buildings, or that it was fairly wide and cleared of trees making it skiable. Had that not worked I was planning to carrying down through the forest hitting the outer loop of one of the nordic trails, slightly longer but assured of easier skiing.
But, the track turned out as I expected. wide enough to ski, in fact flat and wide enough to let the skis run a little down to the marked trails. Nevertheless, this was demanding skiing and I was pleased to hit the trail and find it mostly slightly downhill so I just boosted along for a few km without too much effort at all.
There is a trail over to the col du Marchiaruz but it wasn’t brilliant at all. I don’t think it had been prepared at all for some day and the snow had drifted in places making it awkward to ski.
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