Despite my recent rant, we returned to Chartreuse this Wednesday morning for another hike. We started at Col de la Charmette and climbed to Col de la Grande Vache, then descended to Col de la Sure, again slightly ascended to Goulet d’Hurtières, and then descended back to Col de la Charmette: 8.5km in 3h30mins (D+/D- 527m).  Instead of two hours we started (ended)  our hike by ascending (descending) for one hour in forest, but this forest was quite different: it was  scenic and dry. The trees were mostly tall and skinny conifers, so they let a lot of sunshine to the ground — and a lot of sun there was as we are approaching this summer’s first heatwave.

The trail up alternated between very steep and rocky sections and flatter sections, whereas the trail down was smooth forest trail, but again quite steep at places. Some pictures of the climb below:

Below are some pictures when we reached Col de la Grande Vache — there certainly were some large cows — and then descended to Col de la Sure  — more cows. Those cows had caused quite a bit of havoc on the hiking trails on these slopes. From there we took a narrow trail that followed the bottom of a cliff before taking a short climb up the cliff through Goulet d’Hurtières, entering the forest again. We had our lunch sandwiches when we were back at Col de la Charmette (last picture).

This certainly was a scenic hike, and it would have been much easier to enjoy had there been fewer flies, or we could have repelled them somehow.