winter sun

It's unusual to have such a blue-sky day in January, so today, we went for a walk for a few hours on the Salève. The hiking trail we aimed for was closed, so we headed up along the winding road at the southern edge of the mountain from Saint-Blaise.

Soon, the spring-ish looking green fields were covered in snow, and the branches and road in glistening ice.

Looking toward the Alps.

After a wintery afternoon, we descended back to the rolling valley in magical golden light that I've only ever seen in paintings of the French countyside.

happy nude year

We're starting of off 2013 a bit more exhilarating than we planned, or this guy took care of that for us. Our hike in the Jura began with an unexpected first. On our way up, we met a fellow nature lover, making his way down the trail totally buck-ass naked...

I have no words...but like the typically prudish American I am, I giggled for about half an hour. Speculating any rational reasons for hiking in January without pants - accidental wet clothes, a nearly-never used trail, resolution...didn't seem like a big deal to him, so liberté monsieur. 

Derek and I continued up the quiet trail, and had no other encounters. The snow line was lower than we expected, first hard packed and icy, then deeper and soft. Our friend from earlier had left nice snowshoe tracks that helped us find good footing partway up the trail and provided "stairs" on some steeper snowy sections. Our little rubber crampons proved themselves, once again, invaluable this winter.

After a snowy-scramble, we arrived at the clearing above the tree line completely covered in a soupy fog...no vast views over the valley today, but a good hike, and time to make our way down to clearing skies before dark.