Hiking to Lac de La Grande Moucherolle

So my husband had a surgery done on his knee back in early July, specifically an ACL reconstruction, due to an old football injury, so his movements are currently limited, although now he is a lot better than a month ago. He can't go hiking for maybe around 6 months, but me being me, I can't hold back the urge to go hiking so I decided to go by myself (and my husband encouraged me to go as well since it was summer). I make these decisions to go hiking last minute though, hence why it's a solo hike, I can't really ask others to go last minute! Although, I look for hiking route every now and again hence why I have them saved on my phone already.

This time I wanted to go to a lake called Lac de La Grande Moucherolle. I took the earliest bus 5100 to Villard de Lans at 07:40, and from there I took a free shuttle (navette gratuite) to Balcon de Villard/Côte 2000, arriving there at 09:15. There was a télécabine from Côte 2000 where you can then just hike for around 1 hour and you'll arrive at the lake. But I wanted to hike all the way up to the lake, and I've downloaded a map already on my phone. It turned out that not many people hiked up, I barely saw anyone during the hike. There were some people doing mountain biking and mountain karting descending near Côte 2000 but after walking for a while, there was only one person cycling passed me and another running down the mountain. It was strange, walking for a couple of hours by myself with no one around. But once I got to the lake, there were many people, so I guessed most people took the télécabine up.

The lake itself seemed to be manmade, but it was still pretty especially with the mountainous backdrop. I also saw some alpine ibex, which was so cool because I have been wanting to see them for a while. I actually saw one in a cave that I had to walk past, and I was a bit worried as there was no one else around and the ibex is a wild animal. But it was fine, I can feel that the ibex kept staring as I walked past but then it walked back into the cave once I was far away. I also saw some marmots, and wow I didn't realise that they made such screeching noise! They look cute but once they open their mouth... quite unbelievable that they are the ones making the sound.

I went around the area near the lake but I could not climb up La Grand Moucherolle as I had to catch the shuttle bus back to Villard de Lans. I only managed to reach Col Des Deux Soeur and I had to make my way back. It took around an hour to reach the télécabine, the walk to the télécabine was a bit tricky as the ground was very rocky and not even at all, as you can see from one of the photos below. I think one of the cool things about going hiking is seeing all the different rock formations, they just make you wonder, how did they become like that. And also that is why you should wear proper hiking shoes, because you never know what kind of terrain you will be hiking on, you don't want to feel sharp rocks underneath your feet.

I reached the télécabine and I asked the staff how much do I have to pay, and I was surprised when he said that it was free to go down, you just have to pay to go up. I was glad that I hiked up and got the télécabine down and saved a few euros. I managed to arrive at Côte 2000 in good time to catch the shuttle back to Villard de Lans and got on the bus back to Grenoble, arriving at around 4pm. There was still a later bus from Villard de Lans but I wanted to be back a bit earlier hence why I decided to not hike up the Grand Moucherolle and catch the earlier bus. Maybe next time I will ride the télécabine up and then hike to the peak of Grand Moucherolle!