A very wet bum

Just south of the Trois Valleys ski area and north of St Gervais etc., is the lovely village of Samoëns and if you drive a little further east, the road ends near Sixt-Fer-à-Cheval.

Here we stayed for two nights at a campsite (Camping le Pelly) in probably the best mountain setting, right under Cirque du Fer à Cheval. Other cirques are available, such as Gavarnie in the French Pyrenees but nothing is so ‘in your face’ as this one. It’s right there, very close and visible. The number of waterfalls and their height is stupendous.

The darker photo is the morning after a night of heavy rain and these views only show one section of the Cirque, which probably spans about 90-110 degrees across one’s field of vision, when viewed from the campsite.

The cirque is one amazing feature but the valley turns north in front of it and stretches away and up, a tremendous perfect ’glaciated valley’.

We chose to walk to the headwall, known as Le  Bout du Monde (the edge of the world). The chosen route, le Pas du Boret, scales the west wall up to an alp, on which there’s a chalet / buvet. The path continues as a traverse, before losing a little height, to reach the end of valley, meeting the ‘tourist path’ that 98% of the walkers appear to use.

Our researcher’s notes allegedly say that this ‘valley wall’ route is easy but I would dispute that and in my defence I submit the following photographs.

That was after the scary start up rock slabs (red line on photo), with nothing to grab except the airy exposure. Later there were no spare hands for taking more photographic evidence.

It was a real slog up the side but little did we know that myrtle tart with cream and coulis would be available at the refuge, le Chalêt du Boret.

I don’t know how these refuge owners get all their necessities up to these places. There’s the lawnmower, chainsaw, all the cafe items, beds and of course the freezer for the bilberries. These must be from last year; it’s too early for this summer’s crop.

The traverse along to Le Bout du Monde was definitely supposed to be easy, however there’s a lot of snow melt and one particular stream proved to be a torrent and wet.

In the words of the guest contributor,

Walking along the path to the Edge of the World we had to cross many streams. We arrived at one which was a raging torrent and had a sign warning of the dangers of not holding tightly to the rope which was fastened across it. The crossing entailed some big jumps/lunges over the fast flowing water, made all the more scary knowing that we were very close to the cliff edge and the top of a high waterfall. 

Anyone who knows Tim will know what a kind, helpful person he is (edited) and so deep down I believe that he was genuinely trying to help me cross. He went over first, hanging on to the rope in case he slipped but found the rope to be too slack. When he was safely across, he gathered the excess rope to make it tight for me. However, the angle of the rope and the rocks meant that as I lunged across the most dangerous part of the water, hanging on to the rope, the newly tightened rope formed a barrier that stopped me reaching my rock and pushed me backwards into the torrent! I held onto the rope for dear life and Tim was pulling the other end. Thankfully I lived to tell the tale and was able to walk back pleasantly cooled by my soaking clothes and feet.

It really was a close call as Dawn was horizontal with rucsack dipping into the water, which would have pulled her in. Thankfully she held on and somehow pulled herself back upright. Various items and body parts got wet.

As I was dry, I soon forgot about this episode. The view at and from the Edge of the World was textbook stuff…

We examined the bottom of a hanging valley waterfall. It’s amazing how the volume and speed of the falling water creates a strong outflowing and very wet and misty wind.

Here’s a short video. It is very chilly there with the down draught and wet mist.

One more river to cross; this one was easier.

For the record, the walk was around 9 miles with 561m of elevation gained and lost.