We met a Divonne at 08;
45.
Participants: Nathan Finkelstein, Bill Westermeyer, Mark Warren, Drew Meek. Paul Dworjanynn, a visiting friend of Drew’s from Australia, joined us. He’d recently finished two months and 1600k walking the Camino and had lots of pilgrim’s tales to share.
At Divonne, Nathan was in discussion with Frank at the Refuge de la Loge about likely storm arrival and, on arrival, telecabine staff also gave warnings of storms. There was some concern about whether the telecabine would be running on our return for the descent and possible impact on scheduled timings for some after the walk.
We arrived Lelex at 09:45. Telecabine up to top station.
It was hazy but there was a pleasant temperature for most of the hike. No rain was seen by the time we got to the telecabine to come down and after that, we didn’t care. It was so much hotter on return to Divonne so we were glad we’d spent the day in the mountains.
We started from the top station at 10:10. Our route followed the darker blue line on the map. Nathan led us up into the forest and away from the refuge to avoid any early stopping for beer or lunch.
We walked out of the denser forest to the Sous-crêt, arriving about 11:20
mark had indicated he wasn’t going to proceed to the Crêt de Neige. While the remainder of the party went on to the summit (round trip around 45m) Mark rested there for a while but also took a stroll up to the Brand Crêt for a view from 18m inferior to ours.
The path along from the Sous-crêt to the peak was quite rocky and I recall it being easier on a previous winter’s snowshoe outing. However, that trip didn’t have the wildflowers seen on this trip.
We arrived at the Crêt de Neige peak (1720m) at about 11:40
After returning to the Sous-crêt to reconnect with Mark, we headed down the main path to a point where Nathan consulted his e-thingy (around 12:30) and we diverted down a path les travelled , reportedly a short cut to the refuge.
It was a fairly steep descent with some parts of slippery scree to negotiate. Mark made a rapid descent to earth on his arse , losing a bit of bark on his elbows but there was not much claret.
Just after 1pm we reached the bottom of the diversion and headed across the fields till we hit the path leading to the refuge
We arrived around 13:15. There were many hikers there. A pair of women on the next table took our group photo. They were en route on a 100k, 5 day hike to Bellegarde.
Perhaps Mark’s earlier fall has some additional consequences as he had difficulty opening his beer cans, the second instance requiring Swiss army knife intervention to open the can after he pulled the ring pull off an unopened can.
Finally, sufficient amber fluid was consumed with our plats de jour (croque or pork brochette). This was followed by a whisky digestives before tartes myrtilles, coffee and genepi (the latter offerred by our hosts).
We left the refuge shortly before 3pm for a short walk to the top station, where, in the absence of storms, the telecabine was running. We arrived back at Lelex around 3:15. Nathan departed for his first aid duties back in Geneva. Thanks to him for organising a great day’s activity. The rest of us returned to Divonne.