This was meant to be the first outing of the snowshoe season. Whereas for the last “hike” 2 weeks ago we definitely needed snowshoes, for this first “snowshoe” outing we didn’t.
Our snowshoe leader was unavailable so I arranged an outing at very short notice. At one point we had 2 rival groups, one planning on Thursday and one Friday, until we compromised and all went Friday.
Ultimately 5 of us and 2 dogs showed up at the parking by Divonne lake at 09:30:- Peter S, Peter T, Mike H, Nathan, Mark 2Ts.
Driving up we only emerged from the mist when we reached St Cergue but from then on it was blue sky and bright sunshine. Nathan had a hard stop at 4pm so we promised to get him back to the car by then and took the simple, direct, route up to the Vermeilley. The path was completely free of snow until just before Genolière, then mostly covered and slippery in places but certainly not requiring snowshoes.
I’d booked lunch for 12:30 and we were already very close by 11:15 so we stopped for coffee just before we went under the trees. Only black coffee since the regular milkmaid had called in sick.
On the way, Nathan posed a maths problem to keep us amused. The diagram shows 2 circles of radius r, touching and with a square sitting on the common tangent and touching each of the circles. Problem is to calculate the area of the square. Led to some discussion and drawing of diagrams during lunch and considerable correspondence after the hike.
We arrived at Le Vermeilley at about 11:30. It was so warm and sunny that we started with beers outside before going in to eat. Naturally there was much toasting of absent friends.
Inside the large open fire was blazing away and it was very cozy. Other groups chose to eat outside so we had the interior to ourselves. Shame no one wanted fondue so we all semi healthily chose croutes of one form or another.
Soon it was time to leave and we simply retraced our steps back to the cars, arriving not long after 3 o’clock, certainly in time for Nathan
A relatively gentle but enjoyable hike of 9km with about 200m dénivellation.
Sincere apologies to anyone else who could have made it on Friday. My original invitation was for Thursday and several could not attend. After we changed to Friday I only sent the message to those already confirmed. Sorry.
