Le Grand Som-Sept. 27 hike

Yesterday's hike was in the Chartreuse mountain range again. We took a bus to 800 meters and from there spied our destination, the top of the mountain--le Grand Som-the large summit, in the distance in the picture above. The hikes often seem impossible to me, at least from the bottom or from a picture. And yet we do end up at the top! It is good to know that if there is a rock face to the mountain, the trail takes you around to the back or side of the mountain where it is much easier to climb.

On this hike, however, our guide book was not accurate on how long it would take us to get to the top, so we decided to go the "quicker" way for the last hour of climbing to the top. We ended up rock climbing (Luc would have loved this!) for about an hour. Hiking poles where of no use since we needed our hands to grab the rocks. I dared not look down! A guy ahead of us scrambled up the rocky face making this look like a piece of cake. Not for us. We were happy to get to the top!

Here we are at 2026 meters.

I'm looking around for a suitable place to picnic.

From the top, you can see the Grande Chartreuse Monastery below--a very strict Catholic religious order where about 30 monks live, mostly in silence. We visited this area and the museum a couple of weeks ago with the students.

We ate our lunch quickly because according to the signs we needed over 3 hours to get back to our bus stop. We took a different and easier trail back down, but also really picked up our pace in the hope that we would still be able to catch our bus (this was the only bus back to Grenoble; hitchhiking would be the alternative).


As we were going down, we were very surprised to meet some of the Carthusian monks on the path. They were in their white robes (no back packs or water), with their hiking boots. Otto quietly pulled out his camera when they were passed us. It can't be easy hiking in long white robes!

Once we were on an easier path we jogged for about 30 minutes, still trying to make our 4:30pm bus departure. We got there 10 minutes ahead of schedule.