Photo : Photographie André ALLIOT / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Le Saut du Doubs
The Saut du Doubs is a waterfall 27 metres high, on the border between France and Switzerland, between the French commune of Villers-le-Lac and the Swiss commune of Le Locle.
It formed about 12,000 years ago, after a gigantic landslide that blocked the valley. Behind this natural dam, the Doubs filled the gorges upstream and created a palaeo-lake, the Lac de Morteau, of which Lac de Chaillexon (or Lac des Brenets) is the present remnant. The dam is made of a permeable heap of limestone fragments: water seeps through at about three cubic metres per second, which explains variations in the lake level.
The falls are reached on foot, by the long-distance footpath GR 5, by car from either country, or in summer by a boat excursion from Villers-le-Lac. Several viewpoints and a pedestrian footbridge offer different angles on the waterfall. Its flow changes greatly with the seasons: it is greatest at snowmelt or after heavy rain. Kayakers have succeeded in running it in flood.
