Mercantour Raspberries in 10 hours

We did a nice day hike yesterday in the Mercantour, with 10 hours hiking and nearly 1600 m vertical, and obtained a handful of delicious wild rasberries. There were fields of wild raspberries on the mountain sides, but there's always too much trail and not enough time.
Starting at the Salese Parking area, northwest of Saint-Martin-Vésubie, the trail is barely light at 7 AM, and at 9-degrees C, much fresher than the coast. It's an hour's hike up to the Col de Salese on the GR52, where there's a multitude of hiking choices.
This day we took the trail that goes up to the Col de Mercière, overlooking the Isola 2000 ski station. On the first half of this 3-hour section of the trail we often see several chamois on the mountain sides. On this Saturday hike, with the occasional shepherd's jeep already out there, and the rare early-morning weekend hiker, we saw only one lovely chamois bounding through the woods.
About an hour out past the Col de Salese there's a nice view down onto a lower valley were a track goes past the hamlet of Mollières (2nd photo).  There's another nice loop hike that takes you along that valley.
An hour and a half out from the Col de Salese our trail crosses the tiny but beautiful little Tavels river (3rd photo). We've previously hiked out to this spot just to spend a couple of hours of leisurely picnic lunching. Today, though, we've another hour and a half up the trail to the Col Mercière.

 The last part of the trail up to the Col Mercière zigzags up mostly treeless, grassy slopes. The views are great, with the only signs of civilization a few concrete pillboxes nestled into the rocky slopes. The ones in our (4th photo) are directly beside the Col Mercière.

Instead of a simple return trip back down the trail, we elected for a little track southeast along the side of the cliffs (5th photo), aiming for the Lac de Tavels. Somewhat of an adventure in that the line of cairns through the rocks gave out (at least to us) and we ended up clambering across large rocky areas and up very steep slopes through the trees before finally finding our remote little lake (1st photo).
We took well-earned lunch break at the side of the lake, completely alone except for four rock climbers on the vertical cliffs high above the lake. Another group of four English-speaking hikers arrived just as we were leaving.
From the Lac de Tavels we followed a small but reasonably-well-marked track southwest, back down to the main trail we had hiked up earlier in the day.
On our return trip, past we passed a shepherd rearranging the stones in the road, beneath where water runs constantly; he said it's up to him to keep the jeep-track in repair because he's the one who uses it. We later stopped to discuss navigation with a couple trying to find the tiny Lac Scluos. Our map was better than theirs but after a bit of exploration we determined that both maps exaggerated by showing a "trail".
Back "down" the return trail includes some uphill stretches, including the final bit up to the Col de Salese, then the last hour down hill with less-than-happy leg muscles to arrive at the parking area a good 10 hours after our departure.

 

Comments

[frank]

Hey, i liked this article,
Im a hiker my self and i promise to go take time one day to go check it out :)
and will I will put a link back at http://www.travelmastery.com as a complementary purpose.
please post more pics!

[Eric (Paris, France)]

"10 hours hiking and nearly 1600 m vertical, and obtained a handful of delicious wild raspberries."

Some people go to the local store for their raspberries! (20 mn. walking, and 25 m. vertical - by elevator)... but do not bring back such cool blogs!