Le Moucherotte

The catch 22 of blogging: I do things that I want to blog about, but I am busy doing more things so I don't have time to blog. In attempt to start sharing my adventures again, here is the story of my trip up Le Moucherotte (1901 m) last Saturday.

Le Moucherotte is a characteristic as seen from Grenoble. It frames many buildings in the downtown and its wall of white rock is slightly formidable. Luckily, my map showed me the easy way up.

Le Moucherotte as seen from downtown Grenoble.

The accessibility of the mountains near Grenoble is the city's true beauty; not only are they close by, but there are lots of buses that go up into them. Five euros got me from the train station to the petite, bucolic mountain village of St Nizier. From there the yellow brick road - err, signs - guided be towards Le Moucherotte.

The hike itself was fairly easy. It was an hour and 10 minute long grind to gain the 800 meters to top from St Nizier.

Catching my breath on the way up

There were lots of people near the top. I guess this is a popular hike! Trying to learn French as I am, lots of people means lots of people to practice my French on. Anyone who was on a bicycle was guaranteed to be quizzed in bad French - I'm desperate for good tips!

The popularity of the hike is understandable, as the view from the top is absolutely amazing. You could see all the way to Mount Blanc that day, which is over 100 kms as the crow flies.

The city of Grenoble and suburbs stretched out in the valley bottom, the mountains of Chartreuse to the left and the mountains of Belledonne to the right. In the middle, the snowy Mont Blanc massive reigns supreme.

Grenoble is surrounded by three mountain ranges: Vercors, Belledonne and Chartreuse, all three of which are very different looking. Le Mouchrotte is in Vercors, which is more like a giant plateau that the other two. The plateau drops off dramatically to the valley floor, created the ridge line seen from Grenoble.

From the top the ridge line was spectacular as well.

A view to the south from the top of Le Moucherotte. Doesn't this scenery look like a fairytale?

From the top I descended down a different path to the village of Lans-en-Vercors, where all the bakeries where closed. No eclairs for Molly!

There were, however, cows.

Inquisitive cow.

Tommorrow I'm off to the mountains of Chartreuse for an overnighter. Look for more posts from that, as well as a couple other I've got up my sleeve, next week!

- The Wild Bazilchuk