This was our first real recce for the upcoming ultra marathon that will take place in six weeks of time on the Chartreuse range. We took an early morning bus to St-Izmier and planned to climb to the first rest stop at Habert-de-Chamechaude and then down to Sappey-en-Chartreuse to catch the bus back home. It was +19C already at 7am., but progressively got hotter and hotter reaching +36C in the early afternoon.

Most of the climb, about 1500m in 10 kilometers, up to the Habert-de-Chamechaude was in the forest but still it was hot and we were sweating profusely. Well, we also had quite a few obstacles to climb.

Pravouta and Dent de Crolles.

L’Emeindras, our short relief from the woods. The Vercors range in the distance.

The last picture was taken from down there by the hut to the left.

Fast forward: we missed the bus in Sappey-en-Chartreuse just by a couple of minutes and the next bus was scheduled in four hours. We also almost missed the closing of the local grocery store at 12:30pm. We bought a bottle of water, some salt crackers and cheese, and enjoyed them in the town park so that we could survive our run to the next bus line.

We reached there one hour later to find out that the bus was running only with an advance reservation. So we spent an extra hour walking all the way home, taking some unusual trails on our way.

Community book exchange station in La Tronche.

The total distance we covered was 19.76km + 6.24km (walk home), with the ascent of 1589m + 40m, and descent of 1344m + 413m. All in about six hours.