Yesterday while I was looking for a Via Ferrata I came across this hike and I am tempted to do it. I will be in the area to do this hike on Saturday and if I camped overnight then I could do the second hike as a solo hike.
The reason not to camp, at this time of year is that the temperature still goes down to 5°c tomorrow, 6°c on Saturday and 8°c on Sunday.
Every week, in Whatsapp groups, I see the same questions. “Who is driving from A?” “Who is driving from B?” “Where can I park?” and more questions. The same questions are asked every time. A decade or two ago I might have understood, but not in 2025.
For some hikes this makes complete sense. For hikes that are impossible to access by train, bus or other it makes sense to ask.
A few days ago someone wrote something about chocolate croissants. I then wrote something about Chocolate easter bunnies. A third person then said “please don’t have conversations, there are hundreds of people reading this exchange”. This is on WhatsApp. WhatsApp is, or at least was, an IM client. For those of a certain age an IM client is a conversation app. It’s the type of app that includes AIM, ICQ, Messenger, Skype and many, many more apps.
This weekend seems to be quiet, hiking wise. So far I see just one event, organised. Sunday would have been an option, except that it could be stormy in the afternoon. If light rain falls, then that’s fine, but if it is hail then it is better to avoid. I think that’s why we have gone from five hikes in a single weekend, to just one.
Yesterday I studied the logistics for this hike, and I got everything ready.
This morning I was studying the logistics for Stage 8 and 9 of the Jura Crest Trail before thinking, “This is too complicated, to be interesting”. Specifically, I noticed that if we finish at Vue des Alpes we have to go via La-Chaux-De-Fonds rather than via Neuchatel. This means that if we go by car, and park in one valley, we need to take multiple trains to get back to the other valley.
This weekend I didn’t blog because I went on two hikes. The first hike was with the History hiking meetup group, and the second was with a GoSocial group. Both hikes were around 10km in different landscapes. The first one went from Bière to Allaman and the second one went from Haut-De-Caux to the Dent De Jaman and back.
From Bière to the Arboretum The first hike was with a larger group than usual for this meetup group.
This weekend I have the choice between running, hiking, walking, via ferrata and probably more. Years ago I would have automatically gravitated towards Via Ferrata because that is a sport I really loved. These days I’m not so sure. It’s especially that the VF would take one and a half hours of driving, which isn’t really the issue, but that it starts at around 11:30, which, for me, is late.
Recently I have been hiking so regularly, and on such long hikes that I rest during the week. Two weeks ago I hiked a lot and we had Vision Du Réel so I didn’t run or cycle much.
This morning I could have gone for a group run with people in Geneva but it felt like a big effort to see just four people. It’s not that I didn’t want to go, but rather that I didn’t want to drive or travel to Geneva twice in one day.
If you live in towns it’s easy to do things. You walk half an hour to an hour and you’re ready to do something. In contrast, if you live in a village doing the same thing would require a lot of traveling.
Tomorrow, for example, I could travel into Geneva in the morning, to run with a group, and then go home, have lunch. Eventually I could drive back to the same town, but this time for the cinema.
If you’re ready to use buses and trains opportunities for walks and hikes open up. Yesterday’s hike, for example, was possible because we parked the cars in Marchairuz before catching a bus to Le Pont. That’s where we met another part of the group before hiking from le Pont, to the Col de Mollendruz. From here we saw the defensive Toblerones before heading back down.
I didn’t expect that the path would take us back down, lower than the road, through the trees for a while, before getting to a clearing and a parking where the smell of barbecue was present.