{"id":421,"date":"2025-05-24T18:42:13","date_gmt":"2025-05-24T18:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/littlecedarfarm.ca\/?p=421"},"modified":"2025-06-08T12:23:52","modified_gmt":"2025-06-08T12:23:52","slug":"where-we-hike-the-gorges-du-chauderon-and-raclette-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/littlecedarfarm.ca\/?p=421","title":{"rendered":"AllTrails.com be damned (or) How to Hike the Gorges du Chauderon backwards"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I awoke still riding the high from last night\u2019s Swiss cheese shooting adventure, to another picturesque morning. The sun, through patchy clouds, creates a pattern of mixed blues across the wide expanse of L\u00e9man. Kind of looks like Cedar\u2019s paint kit when he gets bored and starts mixing colours. I will never grow tired of this view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will also never grow tired of being able to wake up each morning and walk 2 minutes out our front door to where the kind fella at the Denner, or the not-quite-as-kind lady at the train station boulangerie, has their plentiful supply of croissants, pain au chocolat, or tornados laid out for purchase. Timed right, one can hit the boulangerie and then Denner as they are coming out of the oven, and then play hot potato (hot croissant) carrying them back up the stairs to our apartment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was in this blissful moment of weakness\u2014enjoying a coffee and croissant, meditating on the beauty of the lake, recalling my last evening\u2019s cheese-shooting triumph\u2014that I agreed to do something I probably should have thought through more: go hiking<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not just the kind of hiking I\u2019m used to\u2014the lakeside Riviera, cappuccino in one hand, M\u00f6venpick ice cream in the other, kind of hiking. The real Sheila kind of hiking. The kind where you go uphill. Like, on a mountain or something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this case, a gorge. The Gorges du Chauderon to be exact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both Sheila and Cedar seemed excited about it, and being that it was one of the \u2018bucket list\u2019 things we wanted to accomplish on the trip, who was I to protest?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Backpacks loaded with essentials, we headed out on our trek, which took us downhill from Chernex to Montreux, then up through the incredibly beautiful \u2018old town\u2019 part of Montreux, onward to the gorges. This was our first time exploring the old town. With its plentiful caf\u00e9s, cr\u00eaperies, and maze of neat old buildings and cobblestone alleyways, it holds a high prospect of return when we have the time to stop and sample our way through the local gastronomy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This, however, was not in the cards today\u2014we were on a mission to conquer the Gorges du Chauderon. And conquer we did\u2014albeit backwards, and with likely more difficulty than most people. Which is generally typical Lum fashion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The entrance to the hike is pitchforked in two directions: one that leads to the left and into what looks like a forested gravel path, the other looked to be stairs\u2014stairs pointing straight up the side of a cliff. The cautious and common-sense hiker, the kind with a five-year-old doing his first hike, the kind that reads the instructions and the comments on AllTrails.com, would likely have chosen the easier-looking (and correct) path to the left, instead of the cliff-grind vertical stairs to the right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AllTrails and instructions be damned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Cedar, taking more after his mother in this instance, decided the shortest path between two distances is a straight line. A straight vertical line upward. And up we went.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Gorges du Chauderon is a beautiful hike and winds its way through the Gruy\u00e8re Pays-d’Enhaut Regional Nature Park, following along the Baye de Montreux river. I know this because, after we finished grinding out 1,155 stairs straight up, I checked our hiking app, saw the incredible pictures other people had posted, and also noticed we had been hiking the route backwards\u2014and completely missed that part. The stairs were supposed to be on the final return loop of the hike, not the start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AllTrails be damned (again).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Undeterred, we found our way through the tiny village of Glion, refilled our water bottles, and course corrected. At this point we could have done the reasonable thing and rejoined the downward leg of the hike back through the gorge\u2014and more importantly, in the direction of La Rouvenaz terrace, which I envisioned had a chilled Aperol Spritz waiting for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we are not reasonable. At least, my two teammates are not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, we chose to keep traveling upward toward Les Avants, where our frequent readers will know we have some history with the artisan market\u2014and Cedar, the bouncy castle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this goal in mind, we completed the next 6.8 km of vertical ascent, Cedar and Sheila blazing trail, and me huffing along behind, in a far enough distance so as not to hear my grumbling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the risk of this \u2018hiking\u2019 stuff becoming routine here, I\u2019m hesitant to go on about how beautiful the hike was, and what an overly pleasant experience it was sitting in the sunshine in the park as a family, enjoying our picnic and watching the paragliders corkscrew down from the mountains above, and how relaxing and accomplished one feels after a good hike…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not certain this wasn\u2019t the plan all along\u2014Sabine and Sheila, conspiring. Swiss Bouge, Running races in Bern: all a tricky gateway drug into hiking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I\u2019ve said before, the Swiss are outdoor people. And the country\u2014and its infinitely beautiful scenery\u2014is purpose-built for those willing to sever themselves from their screens and explore it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And explore we shall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I awoke still riding the high from last night\u2019s Swiss cheese shooting adventure, to another picturesque morning. The sun, through patchy clouds, creates a pattern of mixed blues across the wide expanse of L\u00e9man. Kind of looks like Cedar\u2019s paint kit when he gets bored and starts mixing colours. I will never grow tired of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,14,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adventure","category-outdoors","category-swiss-places"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/littlecedarfarm.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/IMG_1846-scaled.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/littlecedarfarm.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/littlecedarfarm.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/littlecedarfarm.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/littlecedarfarm.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/littlecedarfarm.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=421"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/littlecedarfarm.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":528,"href":"https:\/\/littlecedarfarm.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421\/revisions\/528"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/littlecedarfarm.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/littlecedarfarm.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/littlecedarfarm.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/littlecedarfarm.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}