Le Saleve

This past weekend we finally made it to Mont Saleve which is the huge green and sand dome visible from our apartment balcony. We've been talking about going there since the day we go to GVA and we finally did it.

Saleve is just across the French border and really, about 20 minutes from our house. There are bike paths and greenways all the way from our apartment to the bottom of the mountain, and we will most likely take out mountain bikes there one day. For this time we just drove.

The Dome is 3,300 feet high and looks so incredibly imposing from the city. In the little town right at the foot of it, it makes quite an impression. It must be so cool living in the shadow of this majestic mountain, I just wonder if people in that little town ever notice it anymore..
We bought our tickets for the cable car to go to the top and hopped on.

You can get round trip or one way tickets. We decided on round trip since we wanted to scout out what the condition and difficulty of the trails down would be before attempting those. And good thing we did. We talked to a guy up top who was getting ready to ride his mountain bike down and he was wearing a full face helmet, shoulder and elbow pads and gloves. He said it was a really rough trail, one of the hardest ones in France. Supposedly it was built 10 years ago but never maintained and that you had to be pretty serious and hard core to attempt it.
Not something for ME I decided...
Anwho, once we got on top we spent some time admiring the amazing panoramic view of the lake, Geneva, and the general area.
We saw a guy getting ready to go paragliding...

 
We went on two quick walks through the woods. One of the walks took us up to the top of Saleve (the cable car station is below the summit, where the station and little restaurant are shielded from the wind) and we got a fantastic view of the Alps which for a good part are STILL completely white and covered in snow. We saw Mont Blanc, the tallest peak there, over 15 thousand feet. It is just amazingly gorgeous and definitely on our must see list. I just can't believe that it's the middle of the summer (middle of July) and those mountains are still all covered in snow. Too cool.

 
After walking we were super hungry so we had a nice little lunch of paninis and croque monsieur (CJ's new favorite) and wild raspberries...

We wandered about a little more and finally we took the cable car down. Wish I had some pictures from the ride back but my camera battery died so...

It was a very fun little trip.