Hiking to Le Moucherotte and Pic Saint Michel

Despite the title that suggests that I hiked both Le Moucherotte and Pic Saint Michel at the same time, well... I didn't. But these peaks are located on the same mountain range, that is the Massif du Vercors, so I thought I'd combine them in one post. For both places, I tried to find routes on google, but once I got there I couldn't always follow the route so I just followed wherever there were foot paths.

Le Moucherotte
My husband and I don't own a car here, therefore we've only tried to go hiking to places that can be traveled to by bus. We went on the earliest bus 5110 from the Grenoble bus station, where we bought day tickets from a machine (loaded to our travel card) and we got off at Saint Nizier du Moucherotte. We then started the hike from this little town, which was already around 1200m above sea level. The peak of Le Moucherotte was 1901m high, so the ascent was around 700m. One thing to keep in mind is the frequency of the bus, you don't want to miss the last bus going back to the city. When we went hiking, there were a lot of deep snow once we got to a certain height which made is more difficult and slower to climb, and we were a bit worried about timing. But we managed to reach the peak, took pictures, had lunch (fried rice!), descend back down, went to toilet, bought hot chocolate and finally catch the bus back to the city. So I advise you to catch the earliest bus (which wasn't too early to be fair, just before 10am I think) and you'll have time to ascend and descend, even when there are plenty of snow on the hike.

The terrain itself wasn't too bad (other than how much snow there was). Sure it was tiring but we didn't feel like we needed chain on our shoes or anything like that for support, we just wore our hiking shoes. Of course it was pretty chilly at the very top, but even if you don't reach the very top, the view will be pretty epic already.

Pic Saint Michel
We went by bus 5100 from Grenoble bus station and got off at Lans-en-Vercors tourist office. It then took about an hour to walk through the village and countryside before reaching the Barnets car park, which can be considered as the starting point, as it is located almost at the foot of the mountain. If you go by car then you can just go straight to the car park.

The elevation gain was also around 700m, with the peak standing at 1966m above sea level. There were also thick snow along our climb (we went in February). However, unlike the hike up Le Moucherotte, we struggled quite a bit on the last stretch to the top. There was a short but steep climb to the top, and a lot of people had chain or racket on their shoes, along with walking stick. We didn't have any of that and ended up crawling up on our hands and feet. Half way we had to stop to think of what to do, and then some people went pass us just on their hiking shoes, I don't know how they made is look so easy. I guess maybe fear got the better of us. But we pushed on, and we managed to get to the top. We had lunch, take pictures, even had a facetime call with the family.

The most fun part of the day was the descend. There was a group of people in front of us who decided to slide down without using anything, so we copied them. Sure our bums and parts of our legs were hurting a bit, but boy it was a lot of fun (slightly dangerous too to be fair), as you can see from the video below.

I cannot wait to go hiking again, and see the mountains without the snow, the trees and landscapes basking in the sun, especially now that lockdown is finally lifted!