Well, the title doesn’t really tell the whole truth. More than a winter climb it was a winter scramble in the woods with some tree-hugging, rock-finding, snow and wind. And we used a rope and our hands; that qualifies for climbing, maybe? And adventure.
And the Jura mountains are not really mountains, they are more like big hills, but whatever, Wikipedia-know-it-all calls them mountains. After a very dry winter start in December and early January we finally have some snow even in the lowlands and it’s been cold for the last weeks, cold enough for the snow to stay powdery and for adventure to be around the corner.
Not having the time to go all the way to the alps, nor having the motivation to spend all day in the office contributing to increasing shareholder value of a global company (maybe my contribution is more to increasing the electricity bill than shareholder value…), I decided that it was time for some adventure on a Wednesday afternoon.
With Jacopo we decided to traverse one of the limestone ridges that are somewhat frequent in the Jura. They are mostly easy climbing in the woods, with parts of scrambling and at times with steep faces on one or both sides of the ridge. The climbing is rarely harder than about 4, mostly 3 but is good fun when in wintery conditions, retreat is mostly easy by rappelling down the side into the woods and the next restaurant is never far. We left the car at 3pm equipped for the big winter traverse: crampons, ice axe, rope, some slings and most importantly headlamps. Adventure, here we come!
Wednesday was cold and windy. With gusts from the north up to about 40 mph it was quite chilly up on the ridge, whenever we could not hide behind a tree and when the belay was set up on the wrong side of the ridge. But that contributes to the overall feeling of being real heroes.

The entire thing lasted just over 3 hours, it included mainly scrambling on snowy forest ground, belaying around trees, some actual rock climbing for those who really wanted it and resisted the lure of the easy ground to the left and right of the ridge, quite a bit of snow, chilly hands, a descent in the dark. Et voilà! A few hours well spent, just to remind me that you have to go out, expose yourself and look for the nice little things in life, because they won't come to you if you don't go and get them.
After this picture we traded the camera for our headlamps, night had come after many more hours of desperate struggle with the elements we made it home just in time for dinner and to stay out of trouble at home.
Well supertopians, this is a TR of limited practical value, since I wouldn’t recommend a trip all the way to good old Europe just to do the Gerstel traverse in Basel Jura (that’s the name of what we did). Just wanted to share some wintery ambiente while waiting to finally go out on real mountains with real skis. I’ll keep you posted.