Randonnée to the Cascade de L'oursiere - Uriage (Suxi-Ric-Trevor-Rachel-Max)

The idea:
http://www.grenoble-montagne.com/modules/smartsection4/item.php?itemid=23
http://bdmlphoto1.free.fr/DImage5/Oursiere/index.html

The start:

the "traversée" of the little rivers went quite easily

The third river was actually a glacier and crossing it was a bit more tough...

The second Glacier was a bit more difficult, i went first because i have this gene of the "kamikazomaxupilamissime". I though just after : "waw i was lucky it did not collapse!" Actually the part of the ice i sat on to jump was an extension of ice of 1.5 m without support on the ground on the bottom. When this edge will break, it will be better that nobody is below! the others did not want to try the same path after i warned them. so they chose to pass above the danger zone. But we forgot a bit Rachel... (oups Sorry!) Ric. went back to break parts of the dangerous edge to facilitate the passage.

Ric. is going down contrary to the apparences ! ;)

the cascade the afternoon ;)

the indications given by the GPS are quite funny... we knew at that stage we had climbed 300m (start at 1100m.. second cascade at 1400 +/-50m)

left: altitude and position; on the right, GPS says: you are in the snow.... (no roads, a bit lost the machine...)


WAW the cascade is very impressive!


i tried to come closed to the water to test the existence of a temperature gradient close to the cascade. it does!

i saw some rainbows in different positions around the bottom of the cascade where water projections are so fine... i could not resist to picturise it :) yes yes look well there is a rainbow ;)

A bit further i found the most unexpected and nicest place possible to find in such a raugh mountain! Like Suxi says, it gives the mood to start running and jumping all over like the childrens we still are :)

PLOUF!

We found beautiful white flowers all spread almost everywhere on gound. Why in this ocean of white are there some that revolt and are violet?

We wanted to reac the lakes.. but half the way our legs decided it was not for today... at this stage, the GPS said we did 8.2 km (but wether or not it is by bird flight or not, i am not sure.)

on the way back i took some pictures of the paths to the cascades... it did not look that hard while climbing!

For those that do not know what phototropism is, here is a striking example. Small, the trees were put on the ground due to an event. It grew up then following the light (trees grow by its apex) the bent of all the trees in that area was pointing to the highest slope gradient. the best hypothesis is that the trees were aligned by an avalanche while small. One could also think about "repatation" or "fauchage" but the ground is rocks there...no differential ground slidings on the different layers allowed.

They will become little frogs..


i will not forget :)

On the way back we tested the GPS to go home... funny thing is my GPS maps do not implement the restrictions due to one way streets also in Grenoble...

friday 13th or Monday 16th?

it seems the last few days are a bit hard for a lot of peoples around me:

- I phoned home after work and my mother forgot to turn off the water in the kitchen so water got out of the sink!!! Swimming pool in the house

- My sister had an interview in brussels and there was a savage train stike.

but earlier that day my father had a meeting to check his eyes in the hospital and could not drive because of the medication he received to dilate the eye diaphragm. So he could not get my sister home earlyenaugh .... since she has always a very positive attitude, she went shopping! hehe

- A good friend got sick the same afternoon...

- Another good friend got her bike stolen in the city of grenoble a few days ago.

- finally a terrible news came from the US the same day.

i would feel like a suvivor if destiny had not fallen a couple of times on my head :-/

The Uppermost Totally Absolutely Craziest Joke to the future brother in law...

Once upon a time there was a guy that received a new car and was very enthousiastic. The friend just proposed me to make a short ride with its brand new car to show how great it is....
During the ride, i noticed a little speed excess ... but i said not too much about it on the moment ;) ...

With the complicity of my old comparse, i found on the web a blank copy of a french "contravention pour exces de vitesse". I filled in all the parts carefully and removed all looking like from "french administration" I just added in the bottom of the document something like: "if you really believe this document is true, then it means you deserve it!"
5 days after the little journey in the car, i put the enveloppe with carefully printed adress in the mailbox. The same evening, we receive a phone call from his girlfriend asking if by any chance we did not make a joke...it was hard but my comparse kept very serious on that phone call. 5 min later, she called again because they still doubted about the origin of the document. The best moment was when we heard from the background:" there is something written in little in the bottom of the page! " and they read it... we just collapsed laughing for 10 min!!!!

"but don't tell it to Mamma..." ;)

Some views from the sky of the house where i grew up

Finally i managed to do something with the mini camera bound to the little plane. It worked again, so the last views from the sky (october) were not only an "accident" :)

The house in the center of the pictures and the garden behind with the 5 big trees (hehe they look so tiny from these views!) and the Magnolia in the front that is with its flowers :)
The little dark stick in the parking... it is me... hehe

The main road to join the house ;) (our house is just a bit on the right on the hidden part of the picture) and the house of the neighbours.

Since every story on this blog has a bit of a strange side, i ll just show what happened to the plane on the second flight of the day : the 3rd big crash of that model ! UPS! I did not understand all what happened but i suspect an electromagnetic "Top" making the radiocontroller blind for a few seconds. (some others claim that i would be a bad pilot... but that is another story ;)
The pieces are all stuck together again... that is the magic of glu.

to be fixed until the following... Crash!
:)

Listen

From the OST of Dreamgirls: Listen from Beyonce
a very good friend of mine likes this song a lot
here are the beautiful lyrics  :)


Listen to the song here in my heart
a melody I start but can't complete

Listen to the sound from deep within
Its only beginning to find release

Ohh the time has come for my dreams to be heard
They will not be pushed aside and turned
Into your own, all 'cause you won't listen

[chorus]
Listen
I am alone at a crossroads
I'm not at home in my own home
And I've tried and tried
To say whats on my mind
You should have known
Now I'm done believing you
You don't know what I'm feeling
I'm more than what
You've made of me
I followed the voice, you gave to me
But now I've gotta find my own
You should have listened

There was someone here inside
Someone I thought had died
So long ago
Oh I'm screaming out
And my dreams will be heard
They will not be pushed Aside or turned
Into your own
All 'cause you won't listen

[chorus]
Listen
I am alone at a crossroads
I'm not at home in my own home
And I've tried and tried
To say whats on my mind
You should have known
Now I'm done believing you
You don't know what I'm feeling
I'm more than what
You've made of me
I followed the voice, you gave to me
But now I've gotta find my own
You should have listened

I don't know where I belong
But I'll be moving on
If you don't, if you won't

Listen to the song here in my heart
A melody I start, but I will complete

Now I am done believing you
You don't know not what I am feeling
I'm more than what you've made of me
I followed the voice you think you gave to me

But now I got to find my own - my own

Les 7 laux (lacs) re again!

Rare or very rare (even weird) are the days that pass by without me doing a mistake...
i was going down in the side of a red track and since i was getting to a cliff (or funnel shaped part of the track), i had to get back to the central part of the track. To do so, i had to climb a "little" (little from far away!) but rough edge made by the trucks that flatten the snow road . so i just turned to change from the nice soft off piste to the normal track. I saw a 50 cm wide snow block right in front of me and though: "great lets make some dusts with this soft block of snow!". i should have taken time to think about it a bit longer... i appeared very soon that the soft snow block was in fact not that soft at all!
this is the part that i will have difficulties to tell because i just do not know what happened. I found myself out 4 m further, up side down, smashing the biscuits in my favorite back bag, the snowboard over my head. If this was a cartoon story, i would say that the snowboard got driven in the ice like a stake into the ground and that i just took off...
now i know what are the "36 candles" looking like ;)
Sarah could testify, i think she saw everything...

conclusion: even red tracks are dangerous!

16-3-07 Les 7 Laux (again!!)

A day when things are not exactly as foreseen but that was nice :)

One thing not to do when you meet the cousins of a very good friend, is almost kill one of them:

Full of courage (some say craziness, insanity), we climbed to the top of the station and begun by a dark track. it was fine but very icy. I saw José "Zé" falling some 75 m down. He lost a ski and i though how bad is it to fall in that slope... that was exactly what happened to me 2 seconds after that though. The place and the moments are never the bests... So i was sliding on the belly and knees and going down faster and faster...without any control of direction, except about going down the black slope (the lines drawn on the icy snow by the truck to flatten the track in the direction of the slope strange fully forbid to follow another direction). Suddenly i realised that i was going right to Zé at full speed. Knowing that that guy is Portuguese, i should have said "CUIDADO"but instead i just screamed "ATTENTION". Zé turned his head and had just the time to move enough for me (Max the missile) not to smash him completely ! i ended my trip 50 m further... oufti!
-Lets do a red track next time?

the bottom


The best part of the trip: when we can sit!


Patricia made a new friend :)

11-3-07 les 7 Laux - Prapoutel with the Sarahs and me

A nice day that almost did not happen that fun for me ...oups

I woke up at 7h00 with my little "radio-réveil" which is much more fidel to wake you up than give hi-fidelity music...well this time also the "waking up function" was not on its best day!
The meeting was a 7h00 in the gare routière de grenoble....

I was indeed supposed to wake up at 6h00 to get up smoothly, wash my face (for the 100% awaken to be guaranteed), get dressed, prepare a sandwitch, eat some miam miam home-made beautiful crepes, finish preparing the bag for the day, ....

Only the vital steps were made with extreme velocity:
I jumped out of bed, grabbed my agenda with the phone number of Sarah T. plus some junk that were on the same table but still no idea how it got stuck in my hand... and ran to grab the phone.
i left a message on Sarah's messagerie : imagine that you have a few seconds to tell you are going "probably" to be late and that you ll run as fast as possible to be there before the bus leaves 50 min later... Probably when she heard the message she had a big laugh because of my sleepy way of talking (i phoned before the cold water on my face!) and the mixed structure of the ideas ;)

At 7h30 i was paking the car in the gare routière. oufffff!!
Thank you Sarah for buying the ticket for me before the bus was full. You took a huge risk! (she did not have her mobile phone...)

The site of Prapoutel is beautiful and the snow was made of great powder ;) we slided down a lot on the dark tracks without killing ourselves!!!! we are all "pro" now...

The gang

The site

The wind blowing the snow away from the top!!!

Going down a dark track (top), but i is not hard enaugh, just follow the traces just above the red arrow on the picture below, it is the path i drew in the snow going down to the right.... :)

and the scary view when looking down from the dark tracks...

hey what about a photo with both the Sarahs ?


i already had one photo with both the Susanas in Allevard...
now i just miss a photo with both the Sofia ;)
only S... women hehehhehe

Chamrousse (again!)

with Susana, Ricardo and Max.

Originally, we plannified to go to Les 7 laux by bus but although we arrived at 7h20 at the gare routière, it was too late ... bus full!! so we went to chamrousse...again for me...but why not after all...

We had ice snow by the morning, melting during lunch, and soup afternoon, ;) bus was cool, after 6 h of heavy sportive exercices, Ric, Susy and i decided to find a seat to lay of all our broken long. However, we found strengh to crawl to the churros shop!!! miam ;)

In a little corner, we found Mike trying to get some rest... we caugh him for a photo...

I only arrived home at 8h30... we were stuck in a huge 3h traffic jam !!! horrible ...
the good thing when we have friends is that there is always something to do, so we joked a bit...

here are the athletes

The good thing about being stuck in a traffic jam is that you have all the time you need to catch a nice picture of the sunset...

The end ... unless it continues?....