Wasserfälle Pich und Cimet

This heap of stones next to the track (clapier) shows how hard people worked to remove stones from the fields. In the past, this area was cultivated, but now only the abandoned farm shows that this era ever existed.

The larch, archetypal tree of the southern Alps, allows grass to grow beneath it, unlike other evergreens, and it is the basis for bright wooded meadows. These zones have been used for pasture by the inhabitants of Allos and Le Bouchier for many years.

A cliff which is crumbling under the effects of freezing weather makes stones fall, which in itself feeds a perpetually mobile scree. When the slope of this scree is not steep enough, the ground stabilises and vegetation can establish itself. Look around you and you will see these two forms of scree, an active one and one which is stable and which has vegetation growing on it. 

More than 140 million years ago, the sea covered this entire region. The sediment which was deposited ultimately shaped this limestone bar (Tithonian bar). The action of the glaciers revealed it and the Pich waterfall provides a remarkable spectacle thanks to it. But this spectacle will have consequences in the future: the water is cutting through the cliff which, despite its solidity, will one day be cloven in two by a craggy gorge and will be admired in turn by future generations.

At the start of the century, humans deforested almost all of the mountains for fuel and building materials and the consequences were catastrophic. (avalanches, disastrous flooding downstream, etc). A gigantic reforestation operation with Austrian pines, Swiss mountain pines and larch was launched, during which this hut was built for the workers undertaking this task. A nursery, irrigated by a channel was even set up and its parallel furrows still exist above the track, just before the hut. The hut is today used by shepherds.

Glaciers have shaped the landscape, as this vast bowl with rounded slopes towering over the Cimet waterfall shows. Later on, erosion has occurred in various ways. The vast screes of La Gorgeasse are the result of freezing weather and then the following thaws whereas wind and water attack the more fragile rocks, shaping the sharp cliffs which tower over the footpath.