Mt. Saint Victoire

We climbed Mt. Saint Victoire yesterday! More accurately, we tried to. We couldn’t read the bus schedule right, and so we missed the 10:15am bus and then came back for a bus that doesn’t run on Sundays, and then had to come back for a final bus two hours later. Once on the bus, it careened through these little twisty roads driving straight at oncoming traffic, but somehow we made it there alive!

The man at the desk at the bottom of the mountain was incredibly French and very unhelpful. He wouldn’t give us a map or explain a good way to get up the mountain, and kind of just pointed us in a general direction and ended up selling us a map for 5 euros. We started hiking and got lost on a trail that turned out to be for super advanced climbers fully equipped with rappelling and climbing gear. We only figured that out when the next green arrow pointed straight at a cliff wall and indicated up. Yea, right. So we ate lunch on a nice dangerous cliff haha but it was beautiful scenery.

The paths were marked with the smallest little dashes “strategically” placed on rocks, which basically guaranteed that you would not see them (and the trail we were taking was the green trail, so seeing those little green dashes on random rocks mixed in with all the brushes was pretty difficult). We got lost again, and eventually found the path that we had intended on being on, and that did not require any gear. Unfortunately, by the time we were in a place that could actually lead to the top of the mountain, about 4 hours had passed and we had to turn back in order to make it off the mountain before the sun set and we would be lost on the mountain for the night. We still made it pretty high up, and it was really beautiful. We got to pick rosemary on the mountainside that was growing wild everywhere.

There were people that were doing “paraplone” off the top. You jump off the mountain with a parachute on and pretty much hang-glide all the way down the mountain. We had already been looking into doing this, but now that we know they offer it at Mt. Saint Victoire so close to us, we’ll definitely be going back for it!

Of course, the bus that would take us back decided that since it’s Sunday they just were going to skip a stop, so we sat at the bus stop for an hour, and eventually called the bus depot who explained that the man had “forgotten” to come back out there. The next bus wasn’t coming for over two hours.

The man that works the desk offered to drive us to the nearest town where we could catch a bus that would come more frequently, and we gratefully accepted. Once he dropped us in this little town in the middle of nowhere, it turned out that there were no busses running to that town today (just because it was Sunday). We had to call a cab which took twenty minutes to come out to us, and charged us for driving out there. He brought us all the way back to our street in Aix, 25 euros later.

All in all, the mountain was a great time. I’m really glad that we went and we’ll definitely go back again and make it to the top. We now know where to catch the bus and to allow more time for climbing! As far as getting to the mountain, I would hope that the next time we go is a weekday and there will be a regular bus schedule haha. But, I’m going to bed happy and exhausted! Definitely a successful day.