Climb every mountain

Yesterday I went on my first hiking expedition in Switzerland. My friends Teesa (from Boston), Huria (Lahore via Boston), Viola (Stockholm), Albrecht (Germany via Paris), and Ludek (Prague) and I caught the train from Lausanne at 7:30am to Villeneuve, near the eastern edge of Lake Leman (lake Geneva), then the bus to a trail near Vouvry, which is just outside of edge of France. You can take a bus to almost anywhere in Switzerland. There are little vans that travel around the less populated villages and regions a few times a day, and you pay a few dollars to get to the beginning of the trail from the train station. There was a young couple and two older men also headed to the same location to go hiking.

It was still raining when we got off the bus, and we were already almost to the snow line. We originally had a plan to do a big circuit hike past a lake and through some mountains, then return to the bus stop by around 6pm, but most people’s lack of hiking boots plus the slippery rocks had a different plan for us.

The first hour was straight up the mountain, which was good because we got warmed up pretty fast. At the top of that hill there is a very impressive view of the Lake Taney, and the village Taney, and all the surrounding mountains which are by now snow-covered. Since hiking is so popular here, there were three little “auberges” in Taney where you can get food and drink. It’s hard to pass those things by, so we stopped in for hot chocolate and croissants.

After Taney, we continued up into the mountains. In the summer, they keep cows here, but the farmers had just moved them down to the valleys for the winter. At this point, it was snowing and we were walking through several inches of snow! I kept feeling as though I was at the farm in the winter. The sun came out for about an hour, and we had lunch on some rocks before it got cold and snowy again and we decided to turn around.

Most of the views from the trail were absolutely amazing. Ludek has posted some pictures of the hike at http://picasaweb.google.com/lcigler/LacDeTaney . Sadly, pictures will never be able to capture the reality of the mountains, but I hope you can at least get some idea of the beauty of the area from them!

The way back was much easier, since it was completely downhill. We stopped in one of the other auberges in Taney for more hot chocolate after circling around the lake, then again at the bottom of the trail while waiting for the bus to take us back!

Finally I got home around 9pm, took a shower and fell asleep!