This past Pentecost holiday weekend we headed to Southern Vercors in Gresse-en-Vercors for an easy hike, to recover from the previous day’s bicycle season opener. We missed the parking lot at Col de l’Allimas (1352m), and then drove all the way to La Bâtie (~1170m), and started walking from there. We did not have a clear idea where to go, besides we were restricted by time, because we had to return the car as early as 2pm. — most of the vehicles in the car sharing system we are members of had been booked for this weekend, only some XXL size vehicles being available, so we took whatever M size car was available for whatever time. We decide to take a trail to Col de l’Allimas and see from there if we had any time left. We really did not, and returned to the La Bâtie following the road.
This is probably the best time of the year here in French alps to enjoy wild flowers. We saw all colors of them, mostly yellow though. The first part of the trial traversed an alpine meadow, but then entered the forest. This was a bit more interesting forest than the one we visited last weekend on Chartreuse. Because this was mostly pine trees, the air was drier and smelled so good, and we had a gorgeous view to the valley below and to Mont Aiguille. The forest was also interrupted with frequent rockslides, over which we had to stumble, giving us a welcome break from monotonous walking 🙂
We did not have enough time to return on the trail, and we kind of dreaded the very steep descents which had been quite challenging to climb, so we decided to return to the car on the road.
On our way home we stopped at Vif, a small town about 20 kilometers south of Grenoble, to enjoy our lunch sandwiches, which we had carried with us for the whole hike. Vif’s townhall square was quite idyllic with all the flowers.
This hike was only 9.2 kilometers long with 722 meters of climbing, and we did it in 2hours and 44 minutes. We will be back for more hiking in this area. It is conveniently located, since it is only one-hour drive away from home, and to get there we can take mostly bigger highways, and curvy mountain roads only for last few kilometers.
