Assault on the Saleve

(Geneva, Switz.) - Actually, I am in Chicago now, but I didn't get a chance to update the cleverblog (hmm... what is new right?) with some pictures from our 'expedition' last weekend up the Saleve. This is the big mountain right outside Geneva. In the summer it is a haven for climbers, hikers, and runners, but this time of year it is significantly less used. Nicola had wanted to go for a tromp in the snow, and upon broaching the subject to labmate Erik, found that he and his wife were thinking of doing essentially the same thing. So we organized a 'tromp' with a bunch of the others. The approach was going to be the 'Grand Gorge', which is essentially the first major cleft in the mtn about a 1/3 of the way from the left on the below schematic (click on it for a blowup). We had a good group with Nicola, me, Erik, Sandra (his wife), Alexander, Marieke (his wife), Marissa (their friend), Dook, Alexey, and myself (err...guess I count for two).



In principle all this was a great idea, but the sunshine that we started with would fade pretty quick. The trail heads up quite soon and was surprisiningly easy since from a distance the ascent is a veritable wall of rock. There are many many switchbacks and soon our cars were distance dots below us.



About halfway to the first scenic overlook the snow, which had been on and off over previous days started up again. Despite the cloudy conditions and snow which was actually quite intense at times, one could still make out the valley floor below.




It snow showered on and off for the next hour as we made our way back and forth across the face. At points when then snow stopped, it afforded good views of the ridge off the east. It is great to have such stuff right in ones backyard. I plan to do a lot more running and hiking up here in the future. Actually, I have a pretty good view of the Saleve face from my apartment (one of these days I need to get pictures online...)



Eventually though, there started to be some collective grumbling about the now continous snow coming down. I would have wanted to push on at at least to make it to the first overlook where one can supposedly look down into the gorge. But that got vetoed, which was fine. While we were waiting to make up our minds, Alexander sprinted ahead to actually make it to the overlook. So I guess our expedition was a success as we got a man on top. My time will come at some other point I suppose.



We made it down much faster than we made it up. Smiles which had dissapeared in the whiteout at 800m up had returned by the time we got back to the parking lot and the cars. That is the group above. We were pretty covered in the white stuff. We finished the day off at a little out of the way local's country cafe with some vin chaud (hot spiced mulled wine) in Veryier.