Pic du Gar, la montagne du dieu Gar

Saint-Béat-Lez

Seen from the plain, the Pic du Gar raises above Saint-Béat a limestone crest with several points, those that José-Maria de Heredia celebrated in L'Exilée. The name may be pleonastic: a root kar, the stone, the rock. On the summit and the flanks, three inscribed votive altars and many uninscribed altars have been found in the ruins and the masonry of two chapels, former places of worship of the Gallo-Roman period; they are addressed to a god Garri or Garre, held to be the deity of the Garumni, the people whom Caesar names in this part of the Pyrenees. The historian Raymond Lizop proposed that this mountain god gave his name to the Garonne, the river of Gar; the hypothesis is taken up by the commune of Moncaup, but Wikipedia flags it as unreferenced and linguists have not settled it. It is said that Christianity did not erase this summit cult: it raised a cross on the neighbouring Pic Saillant and made it the goal of a pilgrimage, which still takes place every year on 6 August, feast of the Transfiguration, or on a nearby day. The present cross, five metres high, was erected in 1936 to give, as its promoters said, a Christian orientation to the veneration of which the mountain was still the object. The ruined chapels, of which our sources give neither name nor date, and the place where the altars are kept remain to be documented; nine communes manage the summer pasture and built a pastoral shelter there in 1976.

Wikipédia — Pic du Gar ↗

Getting there : Two yellow-waymarked starting points, both long and steep: from Moncaup (Place de la République), 12 km and 1,200 m of ascent, by Mont Calem and the summer-pasture huts; from Bezins-Garraux (chapel car park), 13.5 km and 1,170 m by the Col de Caube, returning by the GR 86. Allow the whole day, from May to October; livestock guardian dogs on the summer pastures. Note that the summit with the cross is the Pic Saillant; the Pic du Gar is the one on the left.

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

Ambient sound