Lac de l’Eychauda (2539m)

The Chalet and parking area of Chambran are just over 15mins drive from our pad, so I felt I ought to drive up the steep switch backs to take in the view. Here at the end of the tarmac, I found a wonderful wild valley, frequented mostly by Marmottes.

In the cool of the morning, I set out to climb up to Lac de l’Eychauda. At 2539m, it had seemed like a good place to spend a night biving, but timings and the weather didn’t quite work out. Instead, I went for a lightweight day trip.

The guidebooks and signpost suggested that it was a 3 hour hike to the lake. I got a good pace on aiming for two, and was both pleased and surprised to arrive there one hour and sixteen minutes after leaving the car. It’s a real slog uphill, but worth it!

As I’d suspected there were plenty of good campspots, but judging by the amount of people walking down hill as I was going up, it’s not a place to find a night of solitude.

I scrambled over some rocks to reach the flat beach area, where the glacier used to reach the lake. The wide open flat moraine felt quite wild. It had been quite overcast, with storms forecast for the afternoon, but as I was sat on the waters edge eating some food, then sun came out and convinced me to strip off and jump in! With snow on the far side, it was pretty cold, but very refreshing after the hot hike.