A casual Sunday walk...to the top of Mont Sainte Victoire!

Recently, Nick and I found ourselves with an entire Sunday all to ourselves! We were sitting in the kitchen having breakfast looking at this gorgeous view of Mt. Ste. Victoire and commenting on what a beautiful day was. One of us said, "A perfect day to go for a walk!" Not needing to discuss our idea with, or get the OK from, anyone else we were packed up and headed out in no time. We drove east in the direction of Mt. Ste. Victoire and parked our car at the Barrage de Bimont, an enormous dam built at the base of the eastern end of the St. Victoire range. Our plan was simply to take a trail and stop when we felt like having lunch.

We had only climbed to the top Mt. Ste. Victoire once before. That was last year with another family, our approach was from the north side and the weather had been cold and windy. Today was entirely different-including the fact that we hadn't set out to climb to the summit! After crossing the dam, we chose an interesting looking trail and just started walking.

As we walked along, we were enjoying the lower trail and the views....

but we started wondering which trail would lead us to the summit?? Before we knew it, we were headed toward the lower ridge of the mountain and the summit didn’t look all that far away. We looked at each other and said “Pour quoi pas? Let's go for it”!!

It was a more strenuous climb along the western ridge than we had imagined from below, but we determinedly trudged on and made it to the Cross at the summit(look carefully at the photo and you'll see it) in about 1 ¾ hours. Heavy rain the night before left the ground, and especially the rocky paths, quite slippery so we had be really careful. At the top, we enjoyed our picnic lunch and the 360-degree panoramic view! Our decent only took about an hour and twenty minutes.

We're sure if we’d planned this outing in advance, odds are it never would have worked out so perfectly. Hooray for spontaneity!