The Pilat: The Crêt de la Perdrix, the Œillon and the Charterhouse Village

Required Activities

• At the orientation table on the Crêt de la Perdrix, 1,432 m and the top of the Pilat, use the 360° view over seven départements to find all three of the directions it names: the Alps and the Rhône valley east, Saint-Étienne and the monts du Forez north, and the Haute-Loire ranges west — then walk out onto a chirat, the gneiss boulder streams frost-shattered off the north slopes in the last glaciation

• Walk up to the Crêt de l'Œillon, 1,364 m, under the mont Pilat television mast, look east for the Alps beyond the Rhône valley on a clear day, and pick out the crest of Les Trois Dents to the south-east — four or five pinnacles of which three stand out, which is how it got its name

• Walk in through the gate of Sainte-Croix-en-Jarez, the only Carthusian monastery in the world to have turned into a village: founded about 1280 by Béatrix de la Tour du Pin, widow of Guillaume de Roussillon, emptied of monks in 1792, then auctioned off in 1794 in 44 lots to local families who moved into the cells — find where the doors and windows of the houses have been cut through monastic walls

• Walk the two minutes on from the Perdrix to the Crêt de la Chèvre, 1,430 m, and find the rock shaped like a sphinx; then drop to La Jasserie below and find what is left of one of the first ski jumps and one of the first ski tows in France