Trek departing from chambéry with a reduced carbon footprint!

7am departure from Chambéry train station; we took a shuttle to get the starting point of our trek:in Vimines, 7 km away. You can complete this stage on foot which will make the loop roughly 1.5 hours longer.

We made a start straight away, taking the superb forestry route up the montagne de l'Epine: 900 metres elevation gain over 10 km which certainly woke up our muscles.

We met a few hunters en route who chatted to us about their day and alerted us to the presence of wild boar and chamois mountain goats up ahead. After this long ascent, we were greeted with a beautiful reward on our arrival: Mont Grêle with its view of lac d’Aiguebelette and the Alps further to the east.

We took advantage of the superb panoramic view from the top of Mont Grêle to have our lunch break before heading south towards Saint-Thibaud-de-Couz.

The descent was lovely, through large plains adorned with rowan trees, strewn with autumn crocuses and the Chartreuse mountain range just coming into view in front of us. Our group of walkers, newly formed just the day before, were starting to get to know each other with the joking well underway!

Once we arrived in Saint-Thibaud, after 900 metres of uphill and almost as much downhill, we stopped off at the Relais des Alpes in the village. It was 4.30pm, we'd had enough and we knew that the next stop was another 3 km away and 650 metres further up the mountain.

Aurélie, the group's go-getter, had a bit of a sore ankle, Baptiste, our newbie trekker felt tired when he arrived, Éole, our anchor thought it would be sensible to find a nice bivouac site sooner rather than later, and Sophie said the sole reason for carrying her tent all day was because she wanted to pitch it as high up as possible!
The magic of being in group is that you have to accommodate everyone's concerns and preferences and so together we took the decision to climb up to Col du Planet.

We left in a light shower, the climb was tough, our bags were heavy...

When we arrived at Col du Planet, it felt like an oasis in the middle of the desert.The sun came out and magnificent trees stood imposingly around a plain of fresh grass:a soft mattress, just waiting for our tents.

A little further on up the trail, we were delighted to discover a source of drinking water so we could quench our thirst. We pitched our tents, prepared our meals and fell asleep quickly, lulled by the cry of a nocturnal raptor who was probably intrigued by our presence.

The previous day we'd spotted an interesting view point on the ordnance survey map which would make a nice early morning walk, depending on when we woke up, the state of our calves and the weather.
I woke up at 6 o'clock and knew that I could count on Baptise, the early riser of the group, to accompany me. One hour of walking with a head-torch, a bit of up and downhill and we reached the rocher du Corbeley where we witnessed the magical spectacle of day breaking over the Chartreuse mountains.

Tea, a bit of muesli and then we packed up camp.

We headed off towards pointe de la Gorgeat through undergrowth that brought us out onto a wonderful path with a magical view of the Chartreuse mountain range.
We began the descent towards Chambéry via pointe de la Lentille and linked up to the GR footpath that took us right into the town centre, a few hours later.

We just had time to grab a coffee, swap our impressions of the weekend and then our train was already waiting to take us back to reality.