Buckle up for our last trip in France. This one brings us to the small town of Le Mont Dore in the Auvergne Rhône Alps region of the country. There, my wife and I spent one of the days of the weekend hiking an inactive volcano called Puy du Sancy.
It was late August of 2022 and our last travel weekend before we would be flying back home to Canada. We spent some time trying to decide where to go for the trip and eventually landed on the location mentioned.
It was a "reasonable" 5 hour drive from our home and a location that we hadn't been to yet and one that we had been eyeing for quite some time.
It appeared to offer some decent hiking and a charming village or two to visit on route so we figured "Why not? Lets check it out and see how it goes!" As always, I drove through the night to get us to our first stop bright and early in the morning.
The first activity for the day was the 1885 meter (6184ft) elevation hike up the ancient and hibernating volcano.
In the warmer months the site makes for a decent, low intensity hike, but in the winter months it is also a ski hill with chair lifts and cable cars to take you to the the top. It seemed like there would be something to do there all year round.
Puy du Sancy from its base
On this particular day neither my wife or I felt all that great. We had both gotten vaccines a day or two before so we were experiencing that lethargic, sick but not sick feeling that tends to come with a shot.
We could have taken the easy route and used the chiarlift to get to the summit of the small mountain but despite our woes, we decided to stick with our plan to hike to the top on our own.
It was a bit of a struggle but nonetheless we powered through, just a little slower and a little more out of breath than usual.
Here is a shot of what "powering through" really looks like (above). It consisted of stops to catch our breath and breaks to deal with our headaches.
It wasn't all pain and misery though. There were moments of fun and laughter as well. It was our last trip so we had to make the most of it no matter what.
The day was a mix between clear skies and sunshine and also a very dense fog that made it hard to see anything at all.
It was sort of the nature of the area I suppose. The mountains were fairly high and were able to reach the clouds above.
The clouds would hit the peaks and then sort of roll over the tops of them and make their way down the sides.
This created a really neat effect at times.
We could actually see the dense wall of white moving down toward us before we were completely engulfed in it.
Needless to say, the contrast between the clear sky and the clouds was quite drastic and very impressive.
This was especially the case when viewed from above.
Here you can really see the clouds rolling over the ridge of the mountains. It had the appearance of liquid smoke.
It reminded me exactly like movie set smoke thats made from dry ice.
It was pretty cool to watch it make its way toward the restaurant that was located midway up the mountain.
We stopped in the restaurant when we made it there to grab a coffee, eat a snack and take a midway-point break.
This might have been our breakfast that day, I can't remember if we had stopped for something to eat before we arrived or not. I'm guessing that we had a croissant in the car on the way. That was our usual practice.
The pie at the restaurant was okay but the thick layer of jelly on top was not the most appetizing thing for me.
The pictures are out of order by the way. I'm jumping between the beginning of the hike and way up on the mountain, based on what I'm writing about.
Me eyeing the summit
After leaving the restaurant we still had a ways to go to climb to the summit.
But the weather had turned back to mostly sunny and clear for us so we had great visibility of the views from that point on.
It's always nicer hiking in the sun as well.
From the restaurant on, there was a wooden boardwalk path leading up to the top.
It snaked it's way up the mountain along a wide ridge.
The views from the ridge were pretty incredible.
We saw a ram or big horn sheep of some sort from there as well. It's always neat when you see a wild animal when hiking.
We paused in this spot and did an impromptu photo shoot at one point before continuing up to the summit.
The dog was carried most of the way but he did walk a portion of the hike in the begining.
My wife did all of the carrying this time because my knees were still completely messed up from the 3 day Pyrenees hike I did two months before this.
Here we are looking back at the chalet before moving onward and upward.
The views didn't change much at the top. Everything was the same up there only farther away *(duh). There were quite a few people gathered but the look out platform and space around was large enough to accommodate everyone without it being overly crowded. There were some benches to sit on along with the stairs and of course some boulders scattered around here and there.
From the top you have a few options to continue your hike other than just going back the same way that you came. You can continue on in the same direction to other pathways in the opposite direction or you can turn around and follow a different ridgeline the other way. We sort of hummed and hawwed for a bit trying to decide what we wanted to do and eventually landed on the easy route of taking the cable car down to the bottom. We were still pretty tired and feeling mildly sick as I mentioned before so we weren't really up for prolonging the hike for a few more hours.
We had other plans that day anyway, including visiting the small town of Le Mont Dore as well as another hike to check out a waterfall. But those are stories for another day.
