Two afternoon hikes in October
A photoessay and some map pins in the French Pre-Alps
Enjoying autumn often feels like a race against time. Before the arboreal eye candy has turned to leafmould and the kind weather is halfway to skiing weather, every weekend in Grenoble cries for a hike.
Here are two of my recent hikes in the French Pre-Alps: one in Chartreuse, one in Vercors. One excelled at blue views, the other at amber leaves, and both had some excellent limestone.
Chartreuse: Below the Dent de Crolles
Remember the pyramidal hulk of cliff that I admired from a distance while watching bee-eaters earlier this year? That’s the Dent (Tooth) de Crolles, one of the dominant landmarks of the massifs surrounding Grenoble. My friend and I drove north to a pass near the Dent de Crolles and walked an easy loop that peaked on a rise below the cliffs, yielding an excellent view of not only the Dent but all three Grenoble massifs.
We could have taken a right and gone zigzagging to the summit of the Dent de Crolles itself, or followed the long spur trail to the cavity in the Dent where a young spéléologue died in 1962 and whose body was never removed,1 but it wasn’t that kind of hiking day for us.
On approaching the green, limestone-strewn alpages around the Dent, we could already see clouds clearing from the triangular blue slice of the Belledonne range across the valley. From the small summit of our hike, we saw an even wider sweep of Belledonne with its morning dusting of snow still intact, plus the skewed cliffs of Vercors marching away into the mist, and the similarly tilted and twisted landscape of the Chartreuse behind us. And just to the south, the highest peak in the Chartreuse, Chamechaude (which I hiked in July and owe a post).
While we admired the views, a yellow paraglider took off from the hillside and sailed off over the valley like a young spider ballooning away on gossamer sheets.
There weren’t very many notable autumn trees yet on this route, but there were charming mushrooms.
Vercors: Pic Saint-Michel
The next weekend, my roommates and I drove south and up into Vercors. (For an introduction to the Vercors massif, see my spring hike, which was much farther south into the range).
From the comparatively gentle slope of the cliff-backs, we could walk up to the precipitous edge of the Vercors spine and look over the valley. The last upward push of the first half of the loop was steep and rocky, crowded with imaginatively grooved limestone. I was sure to take many breathers to glance back at the autumn pastoral that was the Lans-en-Vercors valley from whence we had come.
There was more sun than cloud in the sky as a whole, but the cliffs made their own weather, wearing clouds right where our view was meant to be. The mist was dynamic, rolling up to the cliff-chins and melting away, but we didn’t quite have the patience to wait long enough at the summit for a clear window. Instead, I watched the alpine choughs wafting and trilling on the updrafts and circling us on foot on the rocks in hope of donations. Paragliders wafted, too (but didn’t beg).
In the mist, we spotted passing spectral saints2 in the guise of our shadows.
Soon after we left the Pic Saint-Michel summit and continued along the spine, the window opened, and we got most of the view after all. Below, there was the vivid autumn pelt of the hillsides, patchwork valley floor fingered with glacial moraines, and northward, the pale crowded city. Across, there was Belledonne, and just behind that range, the sharp white peaks of Ecrins (well into the real, grown-up Alps).
The second half of the loop was more gradual and forgiving to the knees, taking us through warm yellow maple scrub and into glowing woods of beech and silver fir. Standing under the canopy was like drinking a stained-glass elixir. My roommates waited (mostly) patiently while I tried to bottle it.
We drove home during the time of alpenglow. While we were still elevated above the valley, we glimpsed Mont Blanc standing clear and shell-pink in the pale offing of the Grenoble panorama, beyond the Chartreuse cliffs and blue Belledonne.
Lost spelunker in a Dent de Crolles cave: See photo at end of the post above
This is so beautiful, Anne. Thank you for the photographs and narrative. We New Englanders think we have the best of autumn but this p[roves us wrong.
Stunning photos!