Mont Thabor et la chapelle Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Douleurs

Névache

At 3,178 m, Mont Thabor is a dome of schist overlooking the Clarée, the Vallée Étroite and the Maurienne. Below the summit, a small stone chapel, Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Douleurs, one of the highest in Europe, stands at 3,171 m between Orelle and Névache; three peaks of the Mélezet valley are called Balthazar, Gaspard and Melchior. According to legend, a pilgrim or a crusader back from the Holy Land recognised in this mountain the Tabor of the Transfiguration, and the people of Le Mélezet, in the Vallée Étroite, built the chapel to recall here the mysteries of Golgotha; the name is nevertheless recent, the mountain being called 'Mont Abor' in the 17^th century and 'Thabor' at the end of the 18^th. The history is firmer: the chapel belonged to the Escartons, the parish of Le Mélezet saw to its upkeep from 1487, and the earliest document naming it dates from 1648; it was entirely rebuilt in 1694, in timber according to the tourist office, and a path of 1694 attests its antiquity. It was rebuilt in masonry in 1816 and enlarged in 1895–1897 to hold three hundred people. In 1860, after a typhoid epidemic, the inhabitants set up Stations of the Cross on the final slopes, and every early August processions still climb up from Le Mélezet, Valmeinier, Modane and Névache. The Savoyard historian Adolphe Gros, in 1935, derived the name rather from a surname, Tabord, borne around Modane.

Wikipédia — Mont Thabor (France) ↗

Getting there : Ascent on foot only, without technical difficulty but long, from July to September: from the Granges de la Vallée Étroite (Névache) by the GR 57, about 4 hours and 1,450 m of ascent; from Valmeinier (Chenalette car park) by the chapel of Notre-Dame-des-Neiges and the Col de la Chapelle, about 5 hours; from Valfréjus by the Thabor refuge (2,502 m) and the Col des Méandes. The interior of the chapel is closed for safety reasons; the summit and its cross are freely accessible.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound