Briancon - part 1

We stayed for 10 days+ in Briancon in July. Lovely place, great weather, pure and fresh air (even more so than in Paris, for sure) and good outdoor activities. Maybe our next 'expatriation' should be there?

Before that, only one hour before leaving for Briancon, we realised that we could not find Ruben's passport anywhere. Oups. We luckily managed to pass through Italy (oulx railway station) without an ID check and then we arranged for a one-day trip to Paris early August to hopefully find the passport somewhere/ file papers for a new passport.

We watched the women semi-finale + finale of the climbing worldcup. These climbers are so impressive and make the route look almost, almost easy.

We did a number of small hikes near by.

Chalets de l'Izoard, with beautiful mountains around.

We stopped before the scree part to the Fort de la Lausette.

Beautiful Vallee etroire, which was annexed by France in 1947 - I still have not figured out why, except that it's a beautiful valley of course - and it is still very Italian. The valley opens on Bardonecchia and there is only a narrow pass to France.

The Lago Verde.

We went back to climbing, not without difficulty. It's tough after almost two years of not climbing. And should I be happy or sad that, at the end of our stay, I was almost back to my previous level of climbing?
'Rocher qui repond', a nice area with easy and not-so-easy routes. We did the easy ones of course, except for Eric who climbed the awful and ill-named 'regal toit'.
Access: 2 to 5 min from the road.

Then we climbed at 'Les Ayes', an area with mostly 6-ish and 7-ish routes, except for one 5a, one 5b and one 5c for us.
Access: dirt road above Villard Saint Pancrace, 2 min walk from the car park, except from the easy routes which are 10 min and a steep hike away.

Elizabeth and Ruben were down in the chalets des ayes. We then explored together the valley, which opens on a wonderful great plain with streams for the kids, with higher up the lovely Orceyrette lake.

We then left Ruben for two days with Elizabeth, to do some hiking on our own.

Starting from Pont de l'alp, toward Grand lac/ lac des Cerces/ lac du grand ban/ lac rond/ lac de la Clarée/ refuge des Drayeres/ and finally refuge de Laval. A nice, long day of hiking with a welcome cloudy cover and only a bit of rain at the end.

Some patches of snow were left.

And then the rain came, briefly.

 We spent the night at the nice and renovated Refuge de Laval, at the end of the Vallée de la Clarée. The following morning the rain was pouring down hard as we were having breakfast. After we got started, there were only light showers/ sunshine/ light showers/ sunshine/ etc. The most inconvenient thing was taking off and putting back on the raincoat all the time.

We followed the Claree, down to Nevache and then to Plampinet.

On Sunday we went to climb at Le Randouillet, just above Elizabeth's house. It has mostly 6 and 7 routes, but a few 5 also.
The best part is the access: 12 min hike from the house!