Rock Fall on Dent de Crolles near Trou du Glaz

[langcliffe]

Météo Grenoble have published the photo below on Facebook. It shows a rock fall on Dent de Crolles, which appears to have taken out the path leading from the col des Ayes to Trou du Glaz. Trou du Glaz is the obvious dark feature just to the left of the collapse at the bottom of the cliff. Hopefully, it should get sorted pretty quickly in the spring, as it is on one of the hill's most popular ascent routes. Alternatively the commune might just close the path...

 

[langcliffe]

The Commune have now officially closed all routes going near Trou de Glaz indefinitely.

https://www.saintpierredechartreuse.fr/

 

[ChrisB]

Now it's fallen, that's might be the safest area, but since people started suing authorities for not protecting them from natural events, they can't take the risk.

 

[langcliffe]

Now it's fallen, that's might be the safest area, but since people started suing authorities for not protecting them from natural events, they can't take the risk.

I can't see much justification for closing the paths up from Guiers Mort and Perquelin, but the GR9 from the col du Coq will need to be stabilised across the rock fall, and that will be a problem with it being covered by snow until early May. I should imagine that the path is so important to the local tourism, that it will get sorted out.

The path from Guiers Mort (Source du Guiers) to Trou du Glaz isn't marked on the map below, but it follows the bottom of the cliff.

I expect to be there for a few weeks in June and early July, and here's hoping it will have been sorted out by then, as I had my eye on a couple of trips involving Tru du Glaz as either an entrance or an exit.

 

[langcliffe]

After inspection by the Restauration des Terrains en Montagne, the path from Perquelin to col des Ayes (the path on the left in the above map) is being reopened today. The damaged section of the GR9 leading from col des Ayes to Trou du Glaz is about 100 metres long, and the RTM's recommendation is that the path should remain closed, and be reassessed in April when the snow has gone.

Apparently, the fallen chunk of cliff was "60 meters high, 35 meters wide at the bottom, and 22 meters wide at the top, with a depth of 1 to 10 meters."

 

[ChrisB]

the fallen chunk of cliff was "60 meters high, 35 meters wide at the bottom, and 22 meters wide at the top, with a depth of 1 to 10 meters

Somewhere around 20,000 tonnes, then.

 

[Fulk]

Funny that, Chris, I'd worked out the same weight but you beat me to it posting.

 

[Ian Ball]

That would be fairly terrifying!

 

[ChrisB]

It reminds me of a rest day from climbing in Chamonix. It was a sunny day, blue sky, and we were puzzled by one small odd looking cloud over the Chamonix Aiguilles. It turned out that the cloud was not meteorological but geological in original. About 2000m of the West Face of the Aiguille de Blaitière had collapsed, wiping out the famous Fissure Brown. Our friends were climbing the North Face of the Aiguille du Plan at the time and had a grandstand view, although they would much rather have been somewhere else - the N Face of the Plan is a steep glacier overhung by seracs (huge unstable blocks of ice) and is the sort of place you don't even want to sneeze let alone feel the shockwave from a huge rockfall.

 

[langcliffe]

Sorry to be boring about this, but the commune have now clarified it is only the path affected by the rock fall that is now closed. The path from Guiers Mort to Trou du Glaz has been reopened.

 

[ChrisB]

The path from Guiers Mort to Trou du Glaz has been reopened.

Good on them. I withdraw my post above about risk aversion - I should have remembered this was in France!