Le Tour du Glandasse (Running)

Wednesday 12 August 2009 03:11PM

I’ve been visiting my french exchange from when I was 14 for the last few days, for a wedding anniversary, and I managed to get a couple of good outings in the hills into the bargain. Most people seem to have disasterous foreign exchanges, and I’d had a few of those before lucking out and spending six weeks with a lovely family in Die, on the Drome river. Die is a fantastic place, with enough world-class climbing, mountain running and cycling to fill a lifetime. To round things off I was paired up with Antonin, a guy my age who was into pretty much all the things I was (predominantly mountain biking and running, at the time). We’ve subsequently stayed more or less in touch, and it was great to visit again after a gap of ten years.

Die was where I first found a passion for running in proper mountains. I had run a bit in the hills of the Peak District, and was starting to discover fell running, but Die was the first place where I had run up hills so big they could take an hour or more to get to the top, even at a decent pace. Antonin and I had some great mountain runs together, and a fair few epics, culminating in cycling to the road head and then running up Le Glandasse, the cliff-ringed mountain that towers 1600m over the town.

That was aged 16 or 17, and the idea of doing more than that didn’t occur to me at the time, but when I decided to go back this year I had a few ideas of a more mature challenge. Top of the list was to run Le Glandasse from Die, including crossing the smaller mountain ridge that stands between town and the summit, then to traverse the spectacular plateau to the other end of the mountain, and return back to town via the town’s other notable mountain landmark the “Dent de Die” (the tooth of Die). Since my impressions of what might be possible in the region had been formed as a teenager, it seemed perhaps this would be too much. But on the train south, armed with a bit of string and a 1:25 000 map, it started to seem feasible – around 40km and with 2000m of ascent.

After a great day walking below Le Glandasse with Hil, I set off the next day at 8am, passing some other runners on the road into town before branching off and starting the first big climb, 500m to the Pas de Bret. I had two half-litre bottles with me and was trying to drink a lot, even though it was cool and I wasn’t thirsty, because I knew that water would be a big problem for the arid second half of the route. The last water source was a little way up the second and biggest climb of the day – 1200m to the rim of Le Glandasse. I drank my fill, topped up the bottles and hoped it would be enough to last through the heat of the day on the summit plateau.

Thankfully both climbs face west, so my early start meant I was in the shade for both of them. The cool of the shade was replaced by a fresh breeze on the summit plateau where the relentlessly steep and rocky path of the ascent gave way to sparsely forested, rolling grassy meadows. The scenery was spectacular, with big cliffs below to the west, La Mont Aiguille and Le Grand Veymont to the north, and twenty or so vultures soaring overhead. It’s rare that you can run on summits in the alps, so to do so was a real pleasure.

I had made the summit plateau in good time, a few minutes over 2 hours, and figured it would take me no longer to get back down, despite it being a lot further. I hadn’t reckoned on exactly how far it was along the plateau – it took a whole hour before I was dropping back into the cool of the forest. Here the path was that most beautiful angle – inperceptibly downhill, so you feel like you are running incredibly well when in fact it is just gravity assisting you. This section, on the Balcon du Glandasse, heading round to the Dent du Die, was perhaps the most breathtaking, with cliffs above the narrow path, very steep ground below, and the Dent periodically coming into view through the trees.

Shortly after this I ran out of water, which unsuprisingly coincided with starting to feel very tired, so the rest of the descent was half pleasure, half chore until finally cooling my head in a water fountain in the village of Les Liotards before plodding the final miles home to my bemused hosts, four hours 42 minutes after leaving.

I didn’t take a camera on the route, but there are some photos here from the day before, which give a bit of an idea of the scenery (although it was much cloudier).

If you’ve got google earth you can download a copy of the route here. I think that should work, it’s the first time I’ve used google earth in this way, so let me know if it doesn’t.