Jura Höhenweg #14: St. Cergue to Nyon

The last time I wrote about walking on the Jura Höhenweg was back in September. That day, I walked into St. Cergue in relatively good weather. And then I went off to the Camino. Since coming back from Spain, I have been thinking about the Höhenweg. As the year went on, I really wanted to finish the walk before the end of the year, and it began to bother me that this might not happen. So with a window of good weather promised last weekend, I decided that this had to be time to do the last stage.

This is the most distant part of the Jura from my home in Basel, so it required an early start. After three train stages, I arrived back in St. Cergue, finding the village very different from how it was in September. The weather was extremely cold, with a mist covering everything.

I headed out on the trail, and at first the mist got worse. There was Glatteis on the roads, and the fields were white. It is hard to say whether it was due to a succession of heavy frosts or real snow. At times it made me wonder, if it is like this close to the village, what is it going to be like on the heights.

But as I went on, the mist started to thin out. On the trail, I rounded a bend, and suddenly there was the peak of Le Dôle, visible through a kind of hazy sunshine. And going on, By the time I could see the mast on La Barillette, the sunshine had won out, and there was not a shred of mist.

In fact, the mist on the lower slopes was a blanket of cloud, covering the entire valley. La Barillette is a busy place. It is accessible by road. And it has a ski station, though that was closed on Sunday. But there were lots of walkers and day trippers. So I decided not to hang around, but soon went on towards Le Dôle.

Going from La Barillette into the saddle between it and Le Dôle, the route looks daunting. However, it is not as tough as it seems, and I was soon up onto the ridge.

The summit of Le Dôle was a busy place on Sunday, but it was a good place to stop and get some photographs of the valley below. And they were spectacular. That blanket of cloud didn’t just cover the land down to St. Cergue. It spread on out across Lake Geneva, seeming to reach even to the Alps.

After that, it was time to descend again. At first, it was in sunshine on the treeless slopes. And then my route went into the forest. Soon after entering the forest, I was back in the mist, that blanket of cloud again. It was eerie in some ways. The forest was almost completely silent: not a breath of wind to rustle the leaves, not a single note of birdsong. With the silence and the mist, it was like something out of movie. I came to a water station, where not only was the water trough frozen, but dripping water from the pipe had formed an icicle.

But that environment does not last forever, and I eventually I came out on the flatter ground. But there was still several kilometres to go. It was road walking all the way. I went through villages with their Christmas decorations out.

And so, eventually, I came to Nyon. The train station in Nyon is the end of the Jura Höhenweg, so this was the end of this journey. Terminus! Now it is time to think of next year’s projects. Until then, I will keep walking, and whatever that project might be, I will write about it here.