After the second week of the heatwave we escaped a little further to Les Deux Alpes ski resort for the national day holiday weekend. We started driving on Saturday morning and after clearing the traffic jam, in a couple of hours we were at Lac du Chambon which is a reservoir in river Romanche. The lake has been frequently in news since April this year when it banks started to collapse, resulting in closing of the tunnel on the main road between Grenoble and Briancon. For some time now there has been a threat of a major landslide and a potential tsunami.

Les Deux Alpes in the early afternoon, and the evening view from our apartment at Le Cellier.

Next day we we took the Station de Trail trail No. 11 (Piet Moutet), 21.9km in length and with 1485m elevation gain. We walked three more kilometers before we even found the trail. Just before the lowest point on the trail we passed an ancient Roman gate at Bons. We started the uphill in the forest, and that’s where we attracted a cloud of flies, which followed us for the rest of the hike. The climb back over Col de Mais (2106m) was tedious and annoying, not the least because of the flies. At the summit there was a bit breeze which repelled the flies.

The second day was the rest day. We took a cable car to the glacier at 3200 meters. It was not too cold, but it had been +5C at 7am. From there we take funiculair to 3600 meters. That’s where we started to feel a bit faint having not been at that altitude for a long time.

Since we had bought a day pass to the ski lifts, we took another cable car down to Vénosc village. We had lunch at Hôtel Chateau de la Muzelle’s. We enjoyed a couple of salads and a carafe of rosé at their attractive garden.

On our last morning at Les Deux Alpes we headed for a run on a Station de Trail trail No. 10 (10.6km). First we followed the same trail as in the other day’s hike, but then descended back to town before starting a tricky climb across the bicycle trails and some ground construction sites up to the summit. When reaching 1900 meters we had a gorgeous view down to Vénéon river valley. From there we had a steep ascent down to the town.

We briefly visited Bourg d’Oisans on our drive back to Grenoble, but didn’t bother to have a drink or anything. We noticed that there were a lot of bicyclists watching Le Tour on bar patios.