Watching the stars at night

"I've got a fantastic idea!" She said.
"What would that be?" we said.
"We should go watch the Perseids at their peak!"
"Sounds like an awesome idea, could get a picnic or something and sit in a field." We thought.
"Well, actually I was thinking of somewhere more exotic..."
"On a building? Different town? What?"
"Well the Jura are only half an hours bus ride away..."
"And 1700 metres straight up..."
"There wouldn't be any cloud or light pollution. And we could say we'd spent a night on a mountain."
"Where it's cold, dark and we might get eaten by hungry cows?"
"Yeah!"
"So... when's the peak?"

Slightly paraphrased this maybe, but that's essentially the planning that went into one of the most awesome things ever devised by mankind, or climbing a mountain for the night for short. Just to cut short any hopes of enthusiasm of fantastic pictures of this night, almost everyone going up the hill forgot their cameras, to a man. Yeah, we were well prepared that night. Apart from man with the awesome camera that took some photoes of the sunrise. But alas, the plan was simple; turn up at a bus stop at 6pm, get bus to base of mountain, climb like mothers to get to the top before it got dark, seal selfs in sleeping bags and blankets to avoid freezing to death. Stages 1 and 2 completed without a problem. Stage 3 took a mild amount of time and the correct use of lots of swearing. For the uninitiated, hiking up a mountain 101 the rushed version.

3.1) Put on sensible shoes for walking long distances. Sandels are not acceptable. Walking boots are good. Barefoot fine, although don't expect any feet left at the end.

3.2) Point self in direction of path.

3.3) Follow said path until you start going downhill.

At this point you are at the top of the mountain. This is all well and good, unless you don't follow 3.2. We were provided with the directions of "Follow this path by a farm until you get to the top." When we came across our first 3 pronged fork with all routes going to the top, secret pacts of murder and ritual sacrifice began to be made (to be fair, these instructions were given by a guy with hair longer than mine and that one night went swimming wearing a toga. I rest my case.), and we started aggressively exploring the natural surroundings, i.e. getting lost.

Several badly chosen routes and about an hour later, we found a car park (Yay!) and some other climbers (double yay!) and some signposts (triple yay and a swig of rum!) which all kindly pointed us in the right direction to get up the bloody mountain. Turns out you can drive 3/4 of the way up it. Hiking, now even for the permenantly lazy. But alas, the rest of the walk up was thoroughly uneventful with clearly signed paths everywhere. Then we found a nice area of greenary, with a convenient copse of trees to block our the wind and keep us sheltered. Perfect we say, perfect!

Until about 12.30pm. For the uninitiated, the higher up you get, the colder it gets. Quite substantially colder actually, especially at night. Back to that lack of preparation; so at an early hour we realise just quite how fucking freezing it gets! You'd think 4 layers would suffice, but the world is insistent on proving us very, very wrong. But the French, the somewhat surprisingly prepared folk they are plan for this kind of stuff. The walkers amongst you will know about the tradition of mountain huts around the world. By crook or by hook, we'd managed to bunker down about 200metres from one. What's that convenience, you've given us a silver platter? Why yes, we will take it with excessive abandon. With a small smattering of French from our resident francophones (from Quebec and Sweden nonetheless) we managed to get the guys left in there to let us crash in the sleeping area, and they even gave us some cheese and wine!

A brief aside about these awesome people. They were an office-full of people from Geneva up here having a party. On a Wednesday night. On a mountain. And as a one up, after having quaffed 2/3 bottles of wine between about 8 of them, they were going to climb back down the mountain. At 1am. And people call me crazy... But they gave us cheese (Roqueforte if I remember correctly) so we can't complain.

But back to the point, hut, roof, walls, stove, cups, water, kettle, tea bags(!). You could call it stereotypically British, but there's nothing quite like sitting at a mile up, with a clear sky, watching a meteor shower whilst drinking tea (Yorkshire blend if you're interested). And what a meteor shower, peak rate of 2 per minute, running from SW to NE right across the Jura. A small part of me might have gone to the warm fuzzy place permenantly along with the giant bunny rabbits. About an hour and a half later, a lack of body temperature forced a retreat in doors and quick attempt at sleep.

You'd think that'd be enough awesome for one day, but of no. As mentioned, the mountains sit NW from Lake Geneva. That'd mean that the sun rose right over lake Geneva. I'll simply say, its a sight to behold, especilly with Mount Blanc just visible in the distance.

For a nice end to the saga, we decided to see how fast we could get down the mountain. Apparently you could run. We tried it. A couple of barbed wire fences and a an angry cow later, we found that it could be done in 30 minutes. Given it took 3 hours to get up(!), I'd call it a step in the right direction. One bus ride later and I was back in the office, only 15 minutes late. Passing out on the desk at 3pm suggested discretion was the better part of valour, and to bed it was.

Proof positive that entertainment can be cheap, and cold.