Mont Aiguille

Chichilianne

Mont Aiguille is a table of Urgonian limestone detached from the Vercors plateau, ringed by vertical walls on every side and crowned with a meadow invisible from below: a mountain that looks like an island floating in the air. In the Middle Ages it was known in Latin as Mons inaccessibilis, the Inaccessible Mountain, and Gervase of Tilbury, around 1211, ranked it among the wonders of the Dauphiné in his Otia Imperialia. He reports that white sheets could be seen spread out to dry on its summit, a sign that beings lived there beyond the reach of men; the natural explanation is probably patches of snow lingering in spring on the summit plateau. In 1492, Charles VIII ordered his captain Antoine de Ville, lord of Domjulien, to conquer the mountain: on 26 June, with a team of workers, ladders and "subtle devices," he reached the summit. The men stayed there several days, found a fine meadow and a herd of chamois trapped by the cliffs, had mass celebrated, erected three crosses and built a dry-stone hut; a notary certified the feat. The mountain was renamed Aiguille-Fort or Mont-Fort, but the name did not stick. Rabelais made light of it in 1552, and Denys de Salvaing de Boissieu, in Les Sept Merveilles du Dauphiné (1656), housed goddesses banished from Olympus there. It would take until 1834 for a local resident to repeat the ascent: three and a half centuries during which Mont Aiguille remained, in the mind of the Dauphiné, a mountain inhabited by something other than men.

Mont Aiguille — Wikipédia ↗

Getting there : From Chichilianne, in the Trièves, climb to the hamlet of La Richardière, from where the path to the Col de l'Aupet (1,653 m) begins, leading to the foot of the walls in about two hours: this is the hike accessible to everyone, and the best viewpoint. The summit itself can only be reached by climbing, on a guided rock-climbing mountaineering route. The coordinates mark the summit.

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

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