Home " Regional meetings " 2008-meetings " 12 to 16 August 2008: Club des Cent Cols international meeting in Arêches (73)

12 to 16 August 2008: Club des Cent Cols international meeting in Arêches (73)

Speech on the Col du Joly, Saturday 16 August 2008

Is everyone here? Farewell to all! Hello and welcome to Savoie.
Hello to our French-speaking friends in Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg.
Good morning to our english friends.
Guten Tag und Willkommen an unsere deutsche Freunde.
Goeden dag en welkom aan onze vlaamse vrienden.
Buon giorno e benvenuto a nostre amigi d'Italia.

I'd also like to welcome two Czech colleagues, who are back on the road today: they took part in the stay in Arêches and their presence illustrates the growing international audience of our brotherhood.

As I said last year at Le Laouzas, it's a great pleasure to get together for our annual meeting, which is traditionally held on 15 August. Due to the vagaries of the calendar, this year we have moved it to the 16th, and we were well advised to do so given the weather in our mountains yesterday. And we're benefiting from the white snap that has passed over all the peaks above 2200 m altitude.

The Col du Joly, the wide gap that connects the Val Montjoie with the upper Hauteluce valley, the Dorinet valley, is a truly remarkable site. I invite you to begin by admiring the sky as it appears before your eyes as you emerge from the pass. Each pass has its own piece of sky, sinking like a wedge into the indentation of a V-shaped pass, or filling with azure the bowl formed by the rounded depression of the pass. If you think back to your climbs, or look at photos again, you'll always find a patch of sky whose image is associated with that of the pass, with infinite nuances depending on the weather and the season. In the end, our club could also be the Club des Cent Ciels!

Then admire the landscape, marked by the imposing presence of Mont Blanc, whose main Dome appears like a white fortress with its ice moat and natural rock ramparts. Closer to us are the Aiguille Croche and the Aiguille de Roselette. An interesting geological feature is the presence of gypsum outcrops to the south of the pass, where dissolution funnels have formed, sheltering small lakes such as Lac de Roselette.

Despite its respectable altitude of 1989 m, and the steep gradients that make it a real climber's paradise, the Col du Joly has never had the honour of being part of the Tour de France, and remains a media unknown. However, we are not the first to organise a cycling event here: in the past, the famous Lyon Chamonix Lyon raid crossed this pass on the Contamines Montjoie side. The event was completed in one go, and neither the distance nor the mule tracks put off the cyclists back then. With much more modest sporting ambitions, our event is reviving an old tradition of climbing the Col du Joly by bike.

Another very old tradition in the mountains, common to many countries, is to erect small stone pyramids at the top of mountain passes. In France, they are called cairns, a Gaelic word borrowed from the Scots. The Germans call them Kar. They are found on other continents, from the Andes to the Himalayas, under a variety of names: in Tibet, for example, they are called chorten. Catalans in the province of Tarragona call them "montjoia". This Latin root is found in an Old French word, mont joie, which has been used in this sense. The generally accepted etymology of the name "Montjoie", which has been associated with Les Contamines since 1949, is Mons Jovis, Mount of Jupiter. However, a link with the Montjoies cannot be ruled out, as this is the route of an ancient Roman road linking the Chamonix valley to Italy, where the salt trade took place, and the cairns at the Col de la Fenêtre and Col du Bonhomme, for example, can be found on the current GR route around Mont Blanc.

That's why, following our meeting at the Col du Joly, where we presented you with a local souvenir in the form of an Opinel, engraved with the Cent Cols logo, which will enable you to slice your Beaufort bread and tomme, and so as not to undermine the friendship between us, we asked you to make a contribution by offering to help build a small cairn at the junction of the tarmac road and the various paths leading up to the pass. For the moment, this cairn belongs to the Club des Cent Cols. What will become of it? It's an eminently precarious construction, so perhaps the stones will return to the mountain from whence they came. Perhaps other hikers will add their stones to those we have laid, thus consolidating this cairn which will become that of the Col du Joly. In any case, its destiny will elude us from now on.

The cairn marks the crossing of the pass, serving as a guide or landmark in case of fog, it can have a religious connotation of protection, particularly on pilgrimage routes, and often the climber or hiker marks his passage by adding his own stone to the edifice. On reflection, by performing this gesture, the hiker is in turn marked by the crossing of the pass: it's a special moment when you return in thought to the places you crossed to reach the pass, and where you project yourself onto those you will discover on the other side. The person who places his stone on a cairn can't help but think of all the people who have previously made the same gesture in the same place: a subtle link is created, like an invisible chain, between these people who don't know each other.

That's why those of us who cross mountain passes more than we should feel the need to get to know each other and to meet up. The creation of our Club was a response to this need, through various means of action, not the least of which is the international meeting on 15 August. Our Confrérie has been in existence for 36 years, and on a birthday cake that would be 36 candles to blow out! It is with great pleasure that we welcome Jean Perdoux, founder of the Club, thanks to whom we are here today. Before I hand over to him, I'd like to make a date with you for the summer of 2009, somewhere in the Pyrenees, with a possible foray into Spanish territory. Nothing has been finalised as yet, but we're still thinking about it and researching.

Thank you all for your presence and your attention. To you, Jean.

Claude Bénistrand

President of the Club des Cent Cols.