MERCANTOUR, INTRODUCTION TO THE ALPS
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| the lake Madone de Fenestre under a drop of rain |
"These granite waves which are called the Alps, these mountains are indeed waves, giant waves... blond and earthy waves... and, over the highest waves, snow breaks and fall in pieces in dark ravines, the way sea foam does... it seems like a monstrous ocean frozen amidst a storm by the breath of Jehovah. It would be a dreadful dream to imagine what the horizon and the human mind would look like if those waves were to suddenly come again in motion"
I came across this quote from Victor Hugo, which I took the liberty to translate, as best as I could, into English, as I think it captures well the impressions produced by coming into the Alps.
the original French version is hereafter:
ces vagues de granit qu'on appelle les Alpes...
ces montagnes sont des vagues en effet, mais des vagues géantes... les lames blondes et terreuses... et, sur les plus hautes ondulations, la neige se déchire et tombe déchiquetée dans des ravins noirs, comme fait l'écume... On croirait voir un océan monstrueux figé au milieux d'une tempête par le souffle de Jéhovah. Un rêve épouvantable, c'est de penser ce que deviendraient l'horizon et l'esprit de l'homme si ces énormes ondes se remettaient tout à coup en mouvement. Victor Hugo
Huge amounts of rocks turned frozen, millions of years ago, amidst the chaos of a storm. Nature has partly reconquered that space for the peaks remain barren when they are not covered with snow or ice. They get only temporary visits from living creatures like men who are eager to conquer the entire surface of the globe and possibly contemplate the serene beauty of a world mostly devoid of human pollution. Up there, on the peaks, the wind is shaping silence. Clouds are dressing-up, sometimes with their shadow or by themselves, these massive mounds of stone in an ever changing manner turning the landscape into an animated movie. Peace reigns in an uncompromising fashion except when the weather turns sour, which reminds us of the unrestricted strengths of the elements. Our first steps on the peaks brought to my mind the legend of the Mount Olympus where Greek gods are residing or the similar concept of Valhalla introduced by Wagner in his Ring. This brings us to music.
I actually noticed that the music playing in my head while walking in the Alps had changed. Two or three pieces were regularly coming to my mind.
1/ Rachmaninoff's Barcarolle for 2 pianos. Suite No.1 opus 5
When clouds or haze are playing with the sun and are animating the landscape. The fluidity of the sound suits well the evanescent nature of the clouds and the way they form or dissolve without any perceptible reason.
https://youtu.be/1NPn6vcQtrk
When clouds or haze are playing with the sun and are animating the landscape. The fluidity of the sound suits well the evanescent nature of the clouds and the way they form or dissolve without any perceptible reason.
https://youtu.be/1NPn6vcQtrk
2/Debussy's Night in the gardens of Spain: en el Generalife
The tension of the music is matching the excitement of discovery but also the adrenaline in dangerous places especially going downhill from steep passes.
https://youtu.be/fIenFNUUNfI
3/Mascagni's Cavalliera Rusticana, intermezzo sinfonico
while walking through a really stunning landscape, when the mind flies carried away by elation
https://youtu.be/7OvsVSWB4TI
while walking through a really stunning landscape, when the mind flies carried away by elation
https://youtu.be/7OvsVSWB4TI
The day we left Saint Martin de Vésubie was one of the rare day that was marked as rain in the weather report. We were to stay at the refuge of Madone de Fenestre, which is is accessible by a road stretch of ten kilometres through a relatively uninteresting landscape. In view of the weather and the boring nature of the journey we exceptionally hitched-hiked and were kindly taken aboard by a young man who told us all about his heartbreak. It is always easier to open up to strangers. He had just, or rather his girlfriend had just concluded their ten-year relationship as he was about to go for a gendarmerie training in a different town, five hundred kilometres away from where they were living. He seemed devastated and ready to let his broken-heart sweat its wounds through a last run over the peaks of Mount Gelas, which he had visited exhaustively with his beloved several times before, making this day particularly painful. At the same time, it would be an attempt to work out the split by re-appropriating this space to himself. This time he had come to collect some genepi flowers to prepare a home-made digestive by marinating the flowers in ninety five degree alcohol for about a month before adding to the resulting concoction the same volume of sugar syrup. Our new friend was so engrossed in his story that the gloomy weather did not seem to bother him.
We said goodbye at the refuge and wished him all the best. It wasn't raining yet. We decided to take a walk at least up to the lake of Madone de Fenestre. The path was essentially made of large broken stones. We saw our first marmot lying low on a nearby rock while assessing if it was safe for it to stay put with this bunch of people coming its way. I noticed that marmot always stay in the vicinity of a water stream. A little further up, we saw a few chamois grazing grass on the other side of the torrent fed by the lake above. It started raining shortly after we reached the lake. We couldn't escape it, so we buried ourselves in our ponchos. A mature ibex was licking a stone, which probably had some salt on it. The animal didn't seem to care too much about our presence provided we didn't come too near. When it felt we were too close it would first look the other way and then if nothing happened, it would walk away and come back later.
As clouds gathered it seemed pointless to continue to the pass of Madone de Fenestre which is the border point with Italy. Instead we spent the rest of the day in the living room of the refuge, happy to be dry while soaked wanderers poured in. I went quickly to the Chapel hosting the Madonna of Fenestre which has been worshipped, among others by pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostella. The polychromatic statue would be dated from the 14th century. In the evening, the sky cleared, revealing the surrounding peaks highlighted with an orange glow.
We shared a dormitory with two Germans who were on a rather robust expedition, happy to have left their wives behind in order to be able to walk eight or nine hours a day for a week.
The next day, we explored the Prals lakes which had been recommended to us as "mandatory" by Eric of "la maison du petit bois" together with the summit of La Vallette from which one had a 360 degree view on the Mercantour and the Alpes Maritime (we could see the sea next to Nice). This led us through diverse landscapes, peatlands where the intriguing cotton grass is often seen, grass fields interspersed with rocks and patches of blooming rhododendron in particular around the lakes, full stretches of large stones which served as harbour to marmots and other smaller animals. As per Victor Hugo's description one side of the mountain wave was usually smoothly round and covered in grass while the other side was mineral and chaotic as a consequence of the cracking of the Earth crust that was caused by the collision of Africa and Europe.
The following day, under a bright and warm sun we left for the Collomb pass on to the Refuge of Nice. First, we went through a forest of fir and met three marmots playing in the sun on a rock before dispersing when they noticed us approaching. The following part was a path through stone blocks and firns on which we followed already formed footprints as a guide. Fortunately our sticks made the crossing easy, though at one point, I learned that it was not wise to walk on the very edge of a firn when the snow collapsed under my foot and my leg met sharp stones. There was just a bruise and a few drops of blood, nothing serious. Up at the pass, a new horizon was revealed to us, a new valley and also the realisation that the way down was quite steep, which meant for me one step at a time, slowly slowly, thinking that if we wanted to make it to Greece, it would be silly to fall and break something especially after my small unfortunate experience on the firn.
We said goodbye at the refuge and wished him all the best. It wasn't raining yet. We decided to take a walk at least up to the lake of Madone de Fenestre. The path was essentially made of large broken stones. We saw our first marmot lying low on a nearby rock while assessing if it was safe for it to stay put with this bunch of people coming its way. I noticed that marmot always stay in the vicinity of a water stream. A little further up, we saw a few chamois grazing grass on the other side of the torrent fed by the lake above. It started raining shortly after we reached the lake. We couldn't escape it, so we buried ourselves in our ponchos. A mature ibex was licking a stone, which probably had some salt on it. The animal didn't seem to care too much about our presence provided we didn't come too near. When it felt we were too close it would first look the other way and then if nothing happened, it would walk away and come back later.
As clouds gathered it seemed pointless to continue to the pass of Madone de Fenestre which is the border point with Italy. Instead we spent the rest of the day in the living room of the refuge, happy to be dry while soaked wanderers poured in. I went quickly to the Chapel hosting the Madonna of Fenestre which has been worshipped, among others by pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostella. The polychromatic statue would be dated from the 14th century. In the evening, the sky cleared, revealing the surrounding peaks highlighted with an orange glow.
We shared a dormitory with two Germans who were on a rather robust expedition, happy to have left their wives behind in order to be able to walk eight or nine hours a day for a week.
The next day, we explored the Prals lakes which had been recommended to us as "mandatory" by Eric of "la maison du petit bois" together with the summit of La Vallette from which one had a 360 degree view on the Mercantour and the Alpes Maritime (we could see the sea next to Nice). This led us through diverse landscapes, peatlands where the intriguing cotton grass is often seen, grass fields interspersed with rocks and patches of blooming rhododendron in particular around the lakes, full stretches of large stones which served as harbour to marmots and other smaller animals. As per Victor Hugo's description one side of the mountain wave was usually smoothly round and covered in grass while the other side was mineral and chaotic as a consequence of the cracking of the Earth crust that was caused by the collision of Africa and Europe.
The following day, under a bright and warm sun we left for the Collomb pass on to the Refuge of Nice. First, we went through a forest of fir and met three marmots playing in the sun on a rock before dispersing when they noticed us approaching. The following part was a path through stone blocks and firns on which we followed already formed footprints as a guide. Fortunately our sticks made the crossing easy, though at one point, I learned that it was not wise to walk on the very edge of a firn when the snow collapsed under my foot and my leg met sharp stones. There was just a bruise and a few drops of blood, nothing serious. Up at the pass, a new horizon was revealed to us, a new valley and also the realisation that the way down was quite steep, which meant for me one step at a time, slowly slowly, thinking that if we wanted to make it to Greece, it would be silly to fall and break something especially after my small unfortunate experience on the firn.
The refuge of Nice is built on the shore of an artificial lake in a valley that was definitely an ancient glacier. The managers are feeding a local group of ibexes so they can usually be seen on a rock above the refuge. Gérard, an old ibex male, was roaming a few meters from the buildings displaying a very large pair of horns on his head. He seemed to be a regular, mostly indifferent to visitors as long as they did not come too close. Meanwhile, down the hill, next to a nearby torrent two younger ibex males were fighting to establish who was stronger. It lasted over an hour of horn crossing, jumps to hit the other's horns with a loud knock. At some point one of them jumped above the torrent and provoked the other to come and join. They quarrelled on from rock to rock, each time at the risk that one them would fall in the water. They came back on solid ground. A third male came around and confusingly tried to join the fight for a few minutes before exiting. Finally after a while, one of the two gave up exhausted.
The night was a bit stifling as twenty people tried to sleep in a dormitory that looked no bigger than twenty square meters, with a man snoring as loud as he could. At 2AM, I opened the door to let in some fresh air and have the sound of the torrent cover the snoring partly, but it wasn't long before someone closed it.
Anyway, after such a good night it was time to leave for the stretch that was announced as the most unpredictable: going up to the pass of Basto in order to reach the valley of Valmasque and then on to the valley of wonders ( vallée des merveilles).
After an easy climb we reached a beautiful lake with firns dropping into it and reflecting on its surface. A chamois was peacefully grazing in the morning sun, he made a detour to reach the lake when it saw us. A bit further up the valley, we met another wanderer with regular shoes and no walking sticks. We wondered how far he would make it now that were closer to what seemed a very large firn that we needed to climb for probably half a mile. He could try on the side of the firn surrounded by stone blocks, but that didn't seem too easy. The snow was soft fortunately, so we could kick our shoes in it to get some support to go up. The last hundred meters of the ascent to the pass of Basto were very steep on a narrow and soft path among stones of different sizes. Going up was definitely easier than down but it did require quite a bit of energy to move up preferably without looking too much behind. After all the pass was now just a few meters away, so no need to look back. The other side was a vast expanse of large stones not too difficult to navigate. A couple of firns later we saw the lovely lakes of Valmasque in a dramatic lighting as the clouds accumulated and moved over the lakes. We were soon at the pass of Valmasque which opened on the valley of wonders. The site has been listed by UNESCO because the area surrounding the Mount Nebo is covered with prehistoric inscriptions.
A long time ago there were lots of glaciers in Mercantour. Their tremendous pressure was daunting and had various effects on the bedrock as they were advancing. One was fracturing layers of rocks, that were in the way, into a chaos of blocks that would be carried along as the glaciers progressed and the other was the polishing of the rocks that would hold. The glaciers are no more in the Merveilles valley, but they have left apparent some polished rocks with orange tones coming from a thin petrified layer of volcanic dust that settled down in form of mud 250 million years ago as the area was still covered by the sea. These rocks were selected by a group of unknown people, some time between 4000 and 2000 BC, to carve symbols on them. They used silex stones in a rotating movement to pierce the colored layer and reveal the grey color of the underlying rock. Each perforation point is called a cupule. Not much is known about the interpretation of the signs. Most probably these were some kind of magical incantations or erudite knowledge repository carved like hieroglyphs. There are recurring signs that can be seen in the valley, a pair of horns that can be joined to form a circle, a dagger is often used to indicate a direction, like the spot where the sun is rising on the date of summer or winter solstice. Then there is another type of signs, more geometric called "réticulés" that looks like aggregates of squares. The signs are often combined and play with rain water to represent some connections. A few representations of people have been discovered. The carvings are concentrated around the Mount Bego that connects the valley of Merveilles with the one of Fontanalbe which is where the signs have been found. The mount Bego has a particular shape, like a truncated pyramid at the top. It is famous for attracting thunder, most certainly because it contains a lot of iron nodules. This characteristic could explain why storms at Mount Bego are legendary and strong and also why the place might have been revered as a place to worship the gods who would bring rain. Some people say the sign with horns was a representation for the bull god which was present in many Mediterranean civilizations. By extension, the letter "alpha" would come from the word bull and it looks very close to a sign with closed horns. Similarly the letter M would be derived from water or sea.
Back in the days, water was very important and scarce by the seaside so it could be one of the reasons why people made offerings to the place where they believed the water originated.
Our guide observed that, at the time of the drawings, the sun was rising in the galaxy of Taurus (bull in Latin) during the summer solstice. It then moved to Aries in 1780 BC and to the Pisces (fish in Latin) galaxy in the first year AD which was coincidentally when the first Christians used the symbol of Fish to represent their religion.
This left us musing about all those mysteries and these coincidental connections. It must have been powered by a group of very knowledgeable people or priests.
The night was a bit stifling as twenty people tried to sleep in a dormitory that looked no bigger than twenty square meters, with a man snoring as loud as he could. At 2AM, I opened the door to let in some fresh air and have the sound of the torrent cover the snoring partly, but it wasn't long before someone closed it.
Anyway, after such a good night it was time to leave for the stretch that was announced as the most unpredictable: going up to the pass of Basto in order to reach the valley of Valmasque and then on to the valley of wonders ( vallée des merveilles).
After an easy climb we reached a beautiful lake with firns dropping into it and reflecting on its surface. A chamois was peacefully grazing in the morning sun, he made a detour to reach the lake when it saw us. A bit further up the valley, we met another wanderer with regular shoes and no walking sticks. We wondered how far he would make it now that were closer to what seemed a very large firn that we needed to climb for probably half a mile. He could try on the side of the firn surrounded by stone blocks, but that didn't seem too easy. The snow was soft fortunately, so we could kick our shoes in it to get some support to go up. The last hundred meters of the ascent to the pass of Basto were very steep on a narrow and soft path among stones of different sizes. Going up was definitely easier than down but it did require quite a bit of energy to move up preferably without looking too much behind. After all the pass was now just a few meters away, so no need to look back. The other side was a vast expanse of large stones not too difficult to navigate. A couple of firns later we saw the lovely lakes of Valmasque in a dramatic lighting as the clouds accumulated and moved over the lakes. We were soon at the pass of Valmasque which opened on the valley of wonders. The site has been listed by UNESCO because the area surrounding the Mount Nebo is covered with prehistoric inscriptions.
A long time ago there were lots of glaciers in Mercantour. Their tremendous pressure was daunting and had various effects on the bedrock as they were advancing. One was fracturing layers of rocks, that were in the way, into a chaos of blocks that would be carried along as the glaciers progressed and the other was the polishing of the rocks that would hold. The glaciers are no more in the Merveilles valley, but they have left apparent some polished rocks with orange tones coming from a thin petrified layer of volcanic dust that settled down in form of mud 250 million years ago as the area was still covered by the sea. These rocks were selected by a group of unknown people, some time between 4000 and 2000 BC, to carve symbols on them. They used silex stones in a rotating movement to pierce the colored layer and reveal the grey color of the underlying rock. Each perforation point is called a cupule. Not much is known about the interpretation of the signs. Most probably these were some kind of magical incantations or erudite knowledge repository carved like hieroglyphs. There are recurring signs that can be seen in the valley, a pair of horns that can be joined to form a circle, a dagger is often used to indicate a direction, like the spot where the sun is rising on the date of summer or winter solstice. Then there is another type of signs, more geometric called "réticulés" that looks like aggregates of squares. The signs are often combined and play with rain water to represent some connections. A few representations of people have been discovered. The carvings are concentrated around the Mount Bego that connects the valley of Merveilles with the one of Fontanalbe which is where the signs have been found. The mount Bego has a particular shape, like a truncated pyramid at the top. It is famous for attracting thunder, most certainly because it contains a lot of iron nodules. This characteristic could explain why storms at Mount Bego are legendary and strong and also why the place might have been revered as a place to worship the gods who would bring rain. Some people say the sign with horns was a representation for the bull god which was present in many Mediterranean civilizations. By extension, the letter "alpha" would come from the word bull and it looks very close to a sign with closed horns. Similarly the letter M would be derived from water or sea.
Back in the days, water was very important and scarce by the seaside so it could be one of the reasons why people made offerings to the place where they believed the water originated.
Our guide observed that, at the time of the drawings, the sun was rising in the galaxy of Taurus (bull in Latin) during the summer solstice. It then moved to Aries in 1780 BC and to the Pisces (fish in Latin) galaxy in the first year AD which was coincidentally when the first Christians used the symbol of Fish to represent their religion.
This left us musing about all those mysteries and these coincidental connections. It must have been powered by a group of very knowledgeable people or priests.
Images
1/ the of lake Madone de Fenestre under a drop of rain
2/ view from the summit of La Valette
3/ Gérard, the Ibex of Refuge de Nice
4/ firns at the Basto pass
5/ a horny symbol, valley of Merveilles
1/ the of lake Madone de Fenestre under a drop of rain
2/ view from the summit of La Valette
3/ Gérard, the Ibex of Refuge de Nice
4/ firns at the Basto pass
5/ a horny symbol, valley of Merveilles
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| view from the summit of La Valette |
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| Gérard, the Ibex of Refuge de Nice |
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| firns at the Basto pass |
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| a horny symbol, valley of Merveilles |
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