A stiff walk up a lovely valley to a high hut with great views

Statistics

3 - 4

hrs

1,195

m

0

m

14

max°

Difficulty

FATMAP difficulty grade

Difficult

Description

Start from the summer hamlet of Ailefroide.

This is a justifiably popular spot in summer, with its lovely campsite, fantastic local single and multi-pitch cragging, great walking and mountaineering.

The lack of lift infrastructure adds to the appeal and tranquility and, being on a dead end road, there is very little traffic pollution in this area.

To start with you are in amongst some trees on this hike, but these soon thin out and it can get pretty hot.

The second half of this walk is up a due S facing slope, so I recommend an early start on a sunny day. You are following a gentle path near the banks of the Torrent de Celse Nière, which drains a large collection of glaciers, so it is a milky, silty river, unsuitable for drinking.

At about 2000m there is a path split.

The L split continues up to the Sélé Hut but you take the R split, which now zig zags steeply up the hillside.

This is an unrelenting 700m height gain up a steep path, but the position of the hut on a promontory and the views from it justify the long approach. There are great views from the hut of the surrounding peaks, in particular the Pelvoux and the Sialouze.

There is plenty of information in the hut and for the strong day trippers you can get a long lunch before heading down.

Many will stay the night in order to climb the Pelvoux the following day.

In particular the classic traverse of the Pelvoux is highly recommended.