Three ibex and tens of wild orchids, the highlights of my recent visit to Switzerland’s Taney region
During a weekend in my favorite wild corner of Switzerland.
I’ve been bombarding you with stories in the region around the altitude lake of Taney, in the heart of the French-speaking Alps -a place I love to visit and especially stay overnight:
In the first story of the series I promised you wild animals and orchids. Well, here they are in this new article!
Three ibex and tens of wild orchids, the highlights on my recent visit to Switzerland’s Taney region
They were no doubt the highlight of this trip. Well, ehem, together with the stunning flowers I found at the top of the hike...
Three wild ibex, called around here Bouquetin in French, and a field of wild pink orchids. All together, right at the same spot, as if planned for the apotheosis of this travel to my favorite wild corner of Switzerland.
After having an early dinner at the Refuge du Grammont, there was still quite some sunlight, so I set to walk up the Grammont mountain. It’s a simple but very steep hike, that gets you from 1450 to over 2000 m.a.s.l. where you can have great views of Lac Leman, waiting on the other side of the Taney valley -here portrayed on hikes up to this mountain in previous visits with friends, during the day and also at night:
Intermezzo with a fun geological fact: up there there’s plenty of fossils! Because this region was underwater some millions of years ago. It emerged slowly as Italy pushes North:
This time I got locked at 1900 m.a.s.l., because I found these ibex and flowers and I stayed over half an hour taking photographs of them. And then, it was getting too dark to keep walking alone…
First, I saw an orchid:
After several shots of the flower, of which the above one is the best representative, I set to keep walking when… right in the scene, an ibex!
Then, another ibex!
I even got these two animals in a 3D photograph that you can enjoy immersively with your phone or you VR device if you have one, by navigating to this link:
https://lucianoabriata.altervista.org/tests/panolens/ibex.html
And right there, on the right, there were 2, no, 3, wait 4, 5, … tens! of orchids crafting a real “wild orchid forest”. Here are my best shots of this orchid forest -and keep reading to see the big male ibex!
Zoom on two flowers of slightly different colors:
And some more views of the forest:
It was getting late, so I decided to turn around and go back to the refuge. But then I saw the two ibex reunited with a bigger, male ibex, with much longer horns:
For moments it was as curious as me:
Male vs. female/young ibex, and ibex vs. chamois
Here you can compare male and female/young ibex in the same photo:
And by comparing with my photos in this previous story, you can tell between chamois and ibex:
I hope you are enjoying these stories set in my favorite wild corner of Switzerland. While this one was the highlight, I still have a couple more.
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