Moucherotte
Moucherotte is a high mountain peak at an elevation of 1.863m (6,112ft) above the sea level, located in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of southeastern France.
The road to the summit is gravel. The road is usually impassable from October to June (weather permitting). There was a hotel built in 1959 just below the summit and a cable car providing access from Grenoble. Le Ermitage Hotel was popular for a time with the jet set including Roger Vadim and Brigitte Bardot. The hotel and lift were abandoned after the 1968 Grenoble Olympics. During the 1968 Winter Olympics, the ski jumping competition was held on a 90-metre springboard, which is still in place on the northern foothills of the Moucherotte. Following first financial difficulties and then vandalism, the hotel closed permanently in the mid-1970s. The hotel and the summit served as the setting for the filming of some scenes from the movie "La Bride sur le cou" (The Bride of the neck), with Brigitte Bardot. After a quarter of a century of the ruins of the hotel were finally demolished along with the cable car station in the summer of 2001.
The road to the summit is brutally steep. Starting from Saint Nizier du Moucherotte, the ascent is 4.3 km long. Over this distance the elevation gain is 698 meters. The average gradient is 16.23%. Located in the Vercors Natural Regional Park, the Moucherotte is the most northerly summit of the Vercors massif. The journey offers stunning views. There are lots of viewpoints, official and unofficial. The summit is a great place to take photos from. You look north and east to the French Alps including Mont Blanc, down to Grenoble, across to the the Chartreuse massif. To the west is the Four Mountain region of the Vercor. The view south is along the crests of peaks to the south including pic Saint Michel and the Grand Moucherolle and Mt Aiguille.
Pic: Clément Poulain