If you follow me on Instagram, you know I took a second trip to France this summer. Unlike the previous trip to Brittany in August, this trip included outdoor activities, like kayaking and hiking. This is the second of 3 posts about these activities. Click to see the first in this series, Kayaking the Gorges of Tarn.
Who knew there were volcanoes in France? Not me. But my partner did, as one of his friends, who is from this area of Auvergne, recommended this region quite highly. And, after having been there, I cannot agree more. When you think of volcanos, you might imagine a stark landscape devoid of much greenery, but the volcanos in this region are mostly covered in grass and the space between them is made up of grassy fields and forests at the lower elevations.
From the town of Murol, where we stayed after our kayaking adventure, we headed north to check out some of the so-called young volcanoes in the Parc Naturel Régional des Volcans d’Auvergne. When I say “young,” what I mean is younger than really, really, really old. Puy de Dôme is between 10,000 and 11,000 years old and the youngest in the chain of volcanoes that make up the Central Massif of the region. So, when compared with nearby Puy de Sancy, which has been inactive for more than 200,000 years, it’s pretty darn young. The term “Puy” means volcanic hill, particularly in Auvergne.
We started at the main parking at the base of Puy de Dôme, not too early, but early enough that there weren’t a lot of people around. We planned to do a circuit, first climbing Puy de Dôme from one side, descending on the other, and looping around to the summit of Puy Pariou before returning to the parking via a winding forested trail. The whole route makes an irregular spiky figure eight.
However, since it was overcast and foggy and the morning forecast called for rain, we opted to do it in the opposite direction, saving Puy de Dôme for later when it would clear up and we would have views. It was the right call.
The trails starts in the forest and is everything I personally want in a trail: soft, with few rocks, surrounded by green, and covered with a generous canopy of trees. Heaven. While we could feel the dampness in the forest, we hadn’t really noticed how bad the fog still was until coming upon a clearing mostly taken up by a large sheep paddock. We looked around and saw…nothing. Well, not really. We saw fog and sheep, of course.
Passing the sheep, we quickly entered the forest again, which was now beginning to thin as we climbed higher. It was also starting to rain: lightly at first, which felt nice because I do really miss the rain. However, after leaving the forest, then rain started to pick up, so we stopped under some overhanging rocks for a break and to put on rain gear.
We continued to slowly head up until we reached a narrow saddle between two hills (or mostly likely small volcanos) covered with grassy hillocks rising on either side. Although the most obvious trail seemed to continue straight along this narrow low point, we turned off onto a less well-traveled route to climb up the hill on our right. At the broad top, we briefly saw Puy Pariou in the near distance, including its long staircase to the summit. To me, through the breaks in the fog, it looked like train tracks. So, I actually thought it was Puy de Dôme, which has a train to the summit. I’m not going to lie, I was pretty embarrassingly disoriented in the fog, and I was having a lot of trouble getting my bearings and placing myself on our map. But thank goodness the trails were easy to follow. After crossing to the other side, we continued down and crossed a sort of plain toward Puy Pariou.
While the stairs up the Puy looked long and dramatic from far away, they were quite easy to climb and super well maintained. It’s not common to encounter stairs to a mountain summit, but the Puys are made up of a lot of loose rocks and earth, so I imagine these stairs help prevent erosion in these popular areas. Before long, we were on the almost Patagonia-level windy summit, along with some sheep off on the grassy side of the volcano’s crater.
Because of the wind, we didn’t stay for long, but as we started to circle around the edge of the crater to the trail leading into the center, the clouds started to clear. We rushed back the short distance to the top to see the view of Puy de Dôme. Then, we took the short trail into the grassy crater to hopefully get a reprieve from the wind for long enough to eat lunch.
After lunch, our route continued down the opposite side of the Puy, quickly entering the forest and getting us out of the wind. The trail circles the base of the Puy Pariou in a forest that has the same lush, quiet feel of the one from earlier in the morning. Eventually, it loops around and intersects the trail where we started the climb up the Puy’s stairs. From here, instead of heading back up the grassy hill from earlier, we headed straight across the flat to rolling expanse of grass between Puy Pariou and Puy de Dôme. At this point, the sky was completely clear so we could finally see all around us. As we started climbing Puy de Dôme, we turned back to look at Puy Pariou. On its side, we could see that the shepherd, along with a couple of sheep dogs, were herding the sheep off the mountain. With the angle of the slope, we watched the dogs circle around the sheep: one toward the top and one toward the bottom of the mountain as they gathered them together in a tighter flock.
We could also see the city of Clermont-Ferrand and its unique church made of dark volcanic stone. From a distance, it was both easy and difficult to see, as it looked more like a dark shadow than an actual church. Like the city was forming a church with its negative space.
The climb up Puy de Dôme was also quick, mostly trail, but also stairs closer to the top before coming out on service road that runs next to the train tracks. The route then continues along the service road until the summit.
Although Puy de Dôme looks pointy from afar, the summit is quite flat, but it has fantastic views. From this highest point, you can see that the volcanic peaks in the region run in a chain, that literally form points along a line. However, because it has nice views, it has that train, which had been a road, then a train, then a road, and now finally a train (with the service road next to it). There is also a large weather station (I think), so lots of towers and antenna, and of course, cafes and restaurants to service the train travelers. Honestly, I’m not sure I will ever get used to this. Of course, the US has such things too, like say, Mount Washington, but this style of mountain-top decoration seems much more common in Europe.
The most interesting thing on top of Puy de Dôme is the Gallo-Roman temple. Once it was just ruins, but after excavating the temple, its remains started to break down more quickly, as these things go. So they are currently reconstructing the temple with similar stone and in style consistent with the original structure and method of construction.
Although Puy de Dôme is higher, it wasn’t as windy as Puy Pariou, but it was cold, and it looked like another bit of rain was going to pass. The summit is crisscrossed with trails and service roads, making it hard to locate the correct trail down, but we did find it, sort of off to the side of the train station and restaurant area. This is the main trail up to the summit, and it’s very wide with a lot of switchbacks. But it’s still pretty steep. On the way down, we passed the train tracks and service road again, but in no time, we were back in the parking lot. Because of the fog that morning, we had no idea we were standing just under the base of the Puy when we started, but we could now look up and see most of it rising out of the forest.
Overall hike stats
Distance: 11 miles/17.7 km
Elevation gain: 2,514 feet/766 m
Time: 5.5 hours with stops
