We wanted to spend the extended Ascension day holiday somewhere in Southern Vercors, where we have not been before, but we could not find any reasonably priced accommodation. Instead, booking.com kept offering places in Vaujany and Alpe d’Huez. We had been in Vaujany before, some years ago to escape the late Summer heat of Grenoble, and we liked it; it is more like a village than a ski resort. Of course it was quite different then when the Summer season was on. Now we were there between seasons, so no shops or restaurants were open, and there were few people to be seen or heard. It was like a ghost town!
We arrived late Wednesday evening, and the first thing to do on Thursday was to drive 6 kilometers down to Allemont by Lac du Verney for grocery shopping.
In the afternoon we took a short hike to the La Cascade de la Fare.
On our second day we hiked to another direction, to Le Grand Beau Rocher at 1887 meters. It was a very scenic hike, and traversed a variety of landscapes from pine forest to alpine meadow to steep and rocky mountain slope. It was also a relatively hard hike because of the altitude gain; in just 11 kilometers (in 4h50min) we had 1076 meters of ascent and descent. We also ran out of water, but luckily we were in French Alps where alpine streams and fresh water are abundant.
The next day’s hike to Le Collet (1652m) via Pourchery was quite different; it was harder and there really was not much scenery to be enjoyed until the very end. The route traveled mostly in forest, and the narrow and steep trail (if there was any trail!) was covered ankle-high by leaves and branches, and other natural debris. The walk was not physically too demanding — we are in good shape — but because of the trail conditions, we had to be alert all the time in order not to lose footing or trip on rocks, and then fall down the slope to our deaths. Not trying to be melodramatic, but that happens a lot here. It also took some of the enjoyment out of otherwise leisurely hike.
Our companion though, whom we named Wilfred after our legendary guide to Mt. Kinabalu, was not bothered by the trail conditions at all. He started to follow (or rather lead) us early on our hike, and accompanied us to the very end. Every now and then he stopped to wait and see that we were still continuing. In the forest he mainly ran his own errands, following whatever animal tracks, but always came back to us. Sometimes he lay on the trail as if to say “Gosh you humans are slow!”. It took us 4h40mins to cover 10.5 kilometers with 1245 meters of ascent and descent. This time we did not run out of water but felt sorry for Wilfred as he was panting heavily in the heat, and there were no streams along this route.
Our last hike on this Ascension day holiday weekend was easy and scenic. We did Le Tour des Lac above Alpe d’Huez ski resort: Lac Noir, Lac Rond, Lac Besson, and Lac Faucille. First we had a gorgeous drive from Vaujany to Alpe d’Huez. There were a lot of hikers on the narrow road, but even more bicyclist; there were literally hundreds of them huffing and puffing up the road. Quite a few of them looked quite miserable, and some had resorted to walking their bike up.
The walk around the lakes was very relaxing, and luckily there were not too many others around. Snowy and fully soaked wet patches restricted our exploration a bit, though. But that summarizes nicely our lovely weekend which was all sunshine and warm weather, with a little refreshing breeze.
