One option, and the one I'd recommend, would be to take that train to the next village and use the marked trails to get to the Col du Marchairuz where I was aiming to spend the next night. But, I'd decided to ski backcountry into the end of the ski area and then cut into the Col du Marchairuz from there. This obviously is somewhat challenging, you need to cross quite a big distance outside of marked trails and being able to do that safely, it goes without saying you shouldn't do that alone.
So I set off on my own picking up a raquette track for the first few km.
That worked quite well mostly but at times the steep slopes were too much for the grip on my skis and without skins I was reduced to herringbones or taking them off altogether at a couple of points.
Then I hit a forest section, this was awkward as there were no proper trails and I had to micronav through the forest. I tried to pick up forestry tracks so I could move quicker but it's a gamble that they're going the right direction, mostly my plan to cut over the summit of a minor peak and drop into a forest track worked. It's hard to tell from the map how clear the trail was going to be in the winter, I'd reasoned as the track skirted a couple of building you'd be able to get a quad bike or similar up it which meant a big enough clearing to ski reasonable quickly through.
The main alpine chain just off in the distance above there. This turned out to be demanding skiing for a couple of hours but I hit the edge of the marked ski circuit as I expected and was rewarded with a few km of track skiing more or less descending so I was able to boost out with my poles and lope through the forest pretty quickly.
Over Col du Marchairuz direction it doesn't seem they've tracked the trail for days and snow's drifted into it so it's tough skiing but I only have 25km to cover so it's not too bad.
I quite fancied a bit of cheese but it was shut, they do a great cheese here called comte which is superb.
And here's a token couple from the next day, not such a nice day, cold and damp and not nice skiing on a non-existent trail.
quite nice, a big talking lion ran past pursued by the white witch at one point which was nice
looking down at the frozen Lac Joux, I sked down to the lake to escape the weather on the ridge line and skied the lake shore, unfortunately the ice wasn't good enough to ski on the lake which would have been fun and allowed me to knock a couple of km off the run into Le Pont.
So that's the first 100km of the Jura traverse, maybe another 200km to go )