Crêt de la Perdrix et le mont Pilat

Graix

The Crêt de la Perdrix, 1,432 metres, crowns the Pilat massif, that granite balcony thrown up between the Rhône and the Forez. Its northern slopes are striped with chirats, rivers of bare blocks that can run down for more than a kilometre: they are the result of the frost-shattering of the granite during the last glaciation, but their look of scree scattered by a giant hand long puzzled people. To the massif as a whole clings the region's most tenacious legend: Pontius Pilate, prefect of Judaea, is said to have died at Vienne or Lyon, and his body, which the earth refused, to have been thrown into a well on the mountain that has borne his name ever since. The story was spread in the 13th century by the Lyon Dominican Étienne de Bourbon, a great collector of exempla, and it has lastingly supplanted the scholarly etymology, which derives the place name instead from the Latin mons pileatus, the mountain "capped" with clouds. Other beliefs punctuate the massif: the Pierre Saint-Martin, to which young children were taken so that they might learn to walk, or the Pierre des Trois Évêques, a former boundary stone between Roman provinces and later between dioceses. The May songs, seasonal collecting rounds by the village youth, were still practised there in the 20th century. No "Pilate's well" has ever been located on the ground: it is the legend that named the mountain, and not the other way round.

Wikipédia - Massif du Pilat ↗

Getting there : Commune of Graix (Loire), some ten kilometres as the crow flies from Saint-Étienne, in the Parc naturel régional du Pilat. Easiest approach from the Col de la République (D 1082) or from the Croix de Chaubouret via the D 8, then a waymarked path to the summit, 30 to 45 minutes of easy walking. Summit coordinates, checked against IGN data. Orientation table at the summit; in clear weather, views from the Alps to the Massif Central. Take care on the chirats: the blocks shift.

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

Ambient sound