"Decked like dowagers at a garden party, Châteux-d'Oex milkers return in fall from mountain pastures. The annual descent, known as désalpe in the French-speaking canton of Vaud, becomes Alpabfahrt in German-speaking Bern."

Désalpe is celebrated with festivals in late September or early October throughout many Alpine villages.

(Text from and photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, the National Geographic book Mountain Worlds, 1988)