Plateau de Salaison

Mountains viewed from the plateau

The final day of our visit to the Alps and John took us to the Plateau de Salaison en route for the airport at Geneva. We left the autoroute at the bottom of the valley and made the long, but scenic climb to reach the plateau at 1512m. The couple of chalets in this picture are dwarfed by the hills behind.

The scene is perhaps not quite as rural as it appears, because off the right the village boasts three or four restaurants.

We parked by the chalets and headed off across the grassy plateau with a plan to climb mont Leschaux opposite.

Soon we saw a classic alpine flower - Mountain Avens.

The path climbed steadily upwards over rock-strewn terrain, between pine trees.

But after a while we hit a steep slope covered in scree. Going became slow and we wondered if we would have time to reach the top, make a safe descent and have lunch in time to catch a our plane. We concluded that a cautious approach would be most sensible and decided to retrace our steps.

We explored a little more of the grassy plateau and were delighted delighted to stumble on this perfect specimen of Nigrittella, to quote John "a classic of exposed turf slopes above about 1800 metres, a member of the orchid family".

We followed the sensible course of going to the restaurant which had most cars parked outside, and enjoyed an excellent lunch. We made the plane comfortably, but unfortunately there was allegedly a surplus bag in the hold and so we had to all disembark for a rather chaotic process of reconciliation on the tarmac.

Conditions: hot (mid 20s).

Distance: 3 miles or so.

Rating: three and half stars.