La Grave and the Galibier: The Meije Glaciers, the Alpine Garden and the Col du Galibier

Required Activities

• Ride both stages of the Meije glacier cable car from La Grave at 1,470 m up to the Girose glacier at 3,173 m, and from the top station pick out the line of the proposed third stage, which would carry on to below the Dôme de la Lauze at 3,559 m and which the valley has been arguing about for years

• Walk the two hectares of the Lautaret alpine garden at 2,100 m, created in 1899 and holding more than 2,000 mountain species in rockeries grouped by habitat and continent, and find the tufa spring in it — more than 14,000 years old, the oldest known at this altitude, and the quarry for the church down at Villar-d'Arène

• Ride or drive up to the Col du Galibier from the Lautaret, find the Henri Desgrange monument at 2,642 m, then look about 400 m west to the unnamed dip 49 m lower down, which is the real col the road ignores — and on the way, the gypsum hollows above the tunnel that look like shell craters and are dissolution funnels

• Walk or drive the 2 km up to the hamlet of Le Chazelet and stand at the oratory above its stone and slate roofs, where the whole north face of the Meije and the glaciers hanging off it fill the far side of the valley