1 August 2021

A day hike to la Tête de la Ruine. We saw it the previous year from la Cîme Guilié, it’s close neighbour, and I wanted to do it since. Early start at the parking of the Boréon (1690m), we follow “à la fraiche” the main track that goes towards the Refuge du Boréon, which we quit before its final climb in order to take a small valley north-west bound, in direction of the Cîme de Baissette, we also leave that track to go towards the Lacs Bessons (2550m) and have a breaky a bit before reaching them.
Then, it is a fun hike up, passing cliffs on a kind of a maze, up, right, down, left, right, up, up… The last bit is very treacherous and vertical before the summit (2981m). We have lunch there, as the clouds are closing in on us. We arrived a bit late for a clear view of the Gélas, and the French summits. Even the Argentera is only partially visible at times. We will have to come back!

We go back down, alternating our route for better spots, and then going to the Refuge du Boréon, to make it more like a loop than a back and forth. A very demanding hike, very hard on the joints, especially with all those boulders and slippery slopes!

Beautiful non the less.
To do: go up la Tête de la Ruine, then down, but only a tiny bit, aiming for la Cîme Guilié (and a swim in that little beautiful like in the rocks near the summit), then, back down. Or, if we are in for a ride, we could even follow that by la Cîme du Mercantour, with or without a night somewhere.

To see the pictures, click here.