Cime du Diable

We’ve been planning to do a hike in the Parc Mercantour with Stephane for quite a while now. So after various excuses to put it off, we finally managed to fix a date for a Sunday, which was now upon us.

Guillaume, a colleague of Stephane’s was also supposed to join us. After some deliberation, we ended up going for Stephane’s proposal, which was the Cime du Diable (according to legend, the devil used to live on this summit). The name was rather ominous, I thought, and it did seem kind of challenging (1050 meters height difference, 7 hours). But at least it sounded better than Guillaume’s one – which was basically do a thee day hike in the Alps in one day! Is he mad or what?

In the end, Guillaume didn’t make it (having spent all Saturday rowing, he was feeling a bit too sore), so it was just me and Stephane who set out towards the wilderness at 7AM in the morning my trusty beamer (I was starting to regret having left Nice 1AM in the morning the night before…). The conditions were pretty much perfect – the sky was clear blue, not a cloud in sight, but at the same time there was a refreshing wind, keeping us cool.

The walk took us to some beautiful alpine scenery pas the Pointe des Trois Communes, down to the Baisse de St-Veran, and again up towards the Pas du Diable (rather ominously named). We were also treated to some pretty cool sights on the way – at the beginning of the walk we were treated to the spectacle of a shepherd gathering his sheep down in the adjacent valley with his dogs. And a bit further on, we were treated to the sight of two rather graceful chamois, who were a bit shy unfortunately…

The final descent towards the Cime du Diable was pretty hard work… But we made it in the end, all the way up the lofty altitude of 2685 meters. And the views from up there were truly stunning – with a chain of lakes in plain sight, leading towards the nearby Vallee des Merveilles. Absolutely amazing – well worth the hike, as they say. Quite a nice place to have our sandwiches (and the Rose wine Stephane had been foresightful enough to bring!). I was a bit gutted though, since I forgot to put my charged battery into my camera, and my trusty Nokia camera/phone then decided to run out of battery just before the summit.

The walk back was equally hard work, if not more so… We did come across the chamois we’d seen earlier, and this time at close range. We were treated to a few special moments of observing the graceful movement of these beautiful animals…

After what felt like a very long time, we eventually arrived back at our car. MY knees were definitely feeling the strain by now. I think it’s a good thing we didn’t go for Guillaume’s suggestions, since completing this 7 hour walk already took us 10 hours….