SnowSlider – Blogging From the mountains by ise

Just a couple of photo’s from the the fourth day of the Jura Traverse. Weather was extremely poor and it just wasn’t a great day to get photo’s.

I’d spent the night at the Col du Marchairuz in the hotel there and planned to ski to Le Pont at the end of the Lac de Joux, I’d a couple of ideas for a route, ether to ski to the Col du Mollendruz or down to the lake. So I skied the ridge line to the Chalet Du Grand Essert and then decided to descend to the lake. I’d decided that the ridge wasn’t going to alter much, it hadn’t been tracked so it was hard work in places and I’d always got a descent to Le Pont off marked trails anyway.

As it was the track down to Les Bioux wasn’t prepared either and varied from unpleasant and crusted snow to packed and fairly easy. There’s supposed to be some sort of track around the lake, this wasn’t prepared either but it was easy enough skiing. Had the ice been stronger it would have been possible to ski on the lake which would have been a novelty.

The Jura mountains run down part of the border of France and Switzerland, they form the watershed of, and divide, the Rhine and Rhone rivers. The word Jura is old from Celtic roots and means forest so you have the forest mountains. Another interesting thing about them is they control our weather in the plateau area a bit, air tends to condense on the Jura giving us a blanket of fog in the plateua region. Some of these photo’s show this really neatly with a sea of fog between the Jura the main alpine chain.

Col du Mollendruz is a nordic ski area near the Lac du Joux which was frozen as I drove past this morning. Because views were going to be so good I took a long loipe along the ridge to enjoy the views. Really Nordic skis are the best way to travel in this area, snowshoes are fine but on the rolling terrain you can move much quicker on nordic skis, there’s also something quite addictive about the movement, something to do with the exercise and endorphins coupled with the scenery maybe?

I probably got more photo’s today than I can use really, so this is a tiny selection.

The frozen lake above is actually Lac de Joux at Le Pont, I’d driven past on my way to the Col de Mollendruz and thought it was worth a photograph.

Most of these are taken looking towards the main alpine chain over the fog filled plateu, it was just the best view all day and the loipe took a great tour along the ridge to enjoy it.

I’ve been experimenting a bit trying to capture the snow on trees recently and I’m fairly pleased with some of the results, I particularly like the effect you can get using the sun to backlight it.