Moonlight walk in the snow

At the office, we have this insane tradition of doing a moonlight walk in the snow. The idea is basically to choose a ski resort, put on some skis or raquettes, and walk up a mountain, basically. Enjoy the moonlit view, and then head back down. Sounds a bit insane, right? But the two previous moonlit walks were actually good fun (call me a masochist), so I decided, what the heck ? Let's do it again this year.... We chose the ski resort of Greolieres-les-Neiges this time around (where I went skiing a couple of weeks ago)

This time around, the weather forecast was promising a clear sky (mind you, that was the case last year too, but still we didn't see the moon). Also, the temperature was a more reasonable +2 (compared to about -10 last year). Last year was a bit of a disaster for me equipmentwise as well, as I broke both of my walking sticks (yes, you got that, BOTH of them). Well, things didn't start much better this year either, as I had forgotten one of the walking sticks at the office. A good way to start off our expedition, then !?

In spite of this slight setback, I was still rearing to go, with my equally motivated companions (Lionel, Eric, Alain from the office, as well as Marc who left us a couple of years ago). The hike up was a lot easier than last year, as the snow was harder this time around. And, what's great, the sky was clear, so the moon was well in sight this time around. Which translated our walk into quite a fantastic and unique experience.

We reached Col de Jerusalem after a relatively brisk 1 hour hike up the ski slope (with Alain galloping ahead of everybody like a madman, as usual). The view from there was just amazing, the moon lighting up the surrounding mountain scenery in quite a unique way!

We then carried on to the highest summit at the ski resort, Cheiron, at a lofty altitude of 1778 meters. We stayed for quite a while, enjoying the views with quite a few other wanderers (seems that we're not the only crazy fools on the Cote to do this kind of thing). And then, 'twas time to walk down the mountain back to our car.

All in all, a fantastic experience, one I'm happy to do again next year!