Thurday, June 25 – A truly vertical waterfall hike! To the Col d’Arsine via the trail from above Villar d’Arene. The Col d’Arsine spans the ridge between our Serre Che valley and the next one over, which includes the La Meije Glacier and Villar d’Arene. We had driven past the road to this trail countless times but, aside from a quick trip up the lower part of the trail maybe 25 years ago when the girls were small, we’d not done this climb. The first 20 minutes and the last 20 minutes were fairly easy, but the intervening territory was a Stairmaster from hell climb!! It felt like 45 degrees! Probably wasn’t, however my legs thought otherwise! But the VIEWS! I could not look down on the way up without serious anxiety and the same was true on the way down. That parking lot was a LONG WAY down!!

Saturday, June 27 – Back to the Vallée de la Claret for a short hike up to the Grotte des 50 Ȃnes (Grotto of the 50 donkeys). The grotto was so named in 1815 when Austrian troops were moving up the Vallée de la Claret and the villagers moved their donkeys (then used for both farming and transportation) up to the grotto to prevent them from being commandeered by the approaching troops. The climb was up a ravine that, like Arizona washes in rain storms, can be dangerous because of the volume of water coming down from above, however, although we had dark clouds overhead, the threatened rain did not happen. And the view was wonderful! This, too, was a new trek for us. Despite having come here for most of the last 23 years, each year we discoverer new trails in the area – it’s a bit like Brigadoon - new trails appear during the intervening year!

Interesting: the Weather Channel and the France météo (weather forecast) had both indicated rain for this area today. Yes, there were dark clouds overhead from time to time, but the overall weather was bright and sunny. The Briancon region is at the confluence of 5 valleys and Briancon’s claim to 360 days of sun/year seems to pan out.