Let us see if this past weekend was what is left of the Summer in the French Alps. This week is expected to bring a lot of rain and temperature drop of 15° Celsius, even snow below 1000m of altitude!
What a Summer it has been! The whole corona virus thing — the lockdown in the Spring and the measures put in place after it ended — have not affected our lifestyle much . We hadn’t planned any foreign travels for the Summer anyway. Instead we have explored France more than before: first Clermont-Ferrand and hiking on the Central Massif in July, then a three-week bicycle tour in the river Loire valley in August, a weekend bicycle tour in the river Drôme valley in September, and a number of hikes here and there, mostly within an hour’s drive from home. To this past weekend we squeezed two hikes, on Saturday from Gresse-en-Vercors and on Sunday from l’Alpe du Grand Serre.
Gresse-en-Vercors (12.6km, 3h25, D+/D- 583m)
From this hike we had gorgeous views to the Southern Vercors range and especially to its highest mountain the Grand Veymont (2341m) and Mont Aiguille (2085m). The weather was quite schizophrenic: while we saw a lot of blue sky, there were a lot of clouds blocking the sun for the first half of the hike, but there was also rain around us. A short drizzle found us when we started the descent. The win on the top was quite strong, which explains my posture in the photo below.
Alpe du Grand Serre (9.41km, 3h32, D+D- 636m)
We had been in this area earlier this Summer, but then we started on the other side of the mountain, from the ghost ski station of Saint Honoré 1500 in Matheysin valley. This time we started from the ski resort of Alpe du Grand Serre up to the direction of Le Grand Serre (2141m) mountain, but did not climb to the summit — it would have been too long a distance, and included a significant descent (and another ascent) midway. So, we just climbed to the top of the highest ski lift. From there we could see Grenoble, and even our building, so we must be able to see the mountain from our window, once we figure out which peak to look for. The weather was equally strange as on Saturday, only this time there was less sun and wind, but it rained hard enough for us to put the rain jackets on.
