Joyeuse Pâques

I did a long Easter morning bike ride today. Last week I climbed into the Chartreuse Massif, just north of Grenoble; this week I checked out Vercors, the range to the east. Last week I felt a little unsafe: out of food and water, up above the snow line, and nothing warm for my legs, so this week I was over-prepared: my wonderful ColdGear tights + ziptop, fleece, and shell; 2.5L of water, 2 bananas, 2 apples, tuna, yogurt, bread. After getting out of town I climbed for about 40 minutes, straight up, to the Tour Sans Venin, and then on to St. Nizier du Mourcherotte. In St. Nizier I stopped briefly to eat some fruit and check out a WWII memorial. The town sits under this mountain that is topped by an amazing cluster of rock-spires. They shoot right up like oversized organ pipes. Anyways... back to the ride; 40 minutes may not sound like much, but to my poor legs, which are more accustomed to running along the Schulkyill or worse on a hamster wheel in Pottruck, it was more than enough for the day. Having climbed about 600m, I was tempted to turn around and cruise back the way I came. But the route I'd planned for the day had me going out to Lans-en-Vercors, so I changed into warm clothes (I was up at the snow line again) and trucked on for another 6-7 miles. Lans is a cute little Alpine sports town with a bunch of cute small hotels/lodging houses and food for active, outdoorsy types (pizzerias! creperies! and a few hunting-lodge-style full-blown restaurants). Then it was time for payback: having climbed to just over 1000m, I had a swift downhill from Lans and through amazing gorges--sheer rock face towering up hundreds of feet overhead. I zoomed back into Fontaine, around the Bastille, and finally back out to Meylan.

All told it was a really fun day! I was really glad that I continued on to Lans: it's a really cute town and seeing the gorges was an unexpected bonus. Next weekend, I think it has got to be the Chamrousse (the other big collection of mountains, situated to the south west).

No pictures (my camera is still broken and sitting completely unassembled on my desk... trying to get the gears that extend the lens to work again, but no luck yet, sigh) but here's a Google Earth view of my route into Lans on the right and the gorges on the left.