The Queyras Natural Regional Park in the South East of France is a little known area of outstanding beauty. It is ringed by mountains and there are only three roads that enter it, and two of them are over passes that are closed during the winter months. The Queyras is the area in France with the highest average height for habitation, and includes the highest village in France - St Veran. It has amazing scenery and is a great place for all mountain activities.
On this ring of mountains there are 40 summits that are over 3000m high with a prominence of over 30m. Roughly half of them can be hiked up, and the other half require a bit of scrambling or traversing over exposed terrain. The hardest grade is around French 3b rock climbing on the Tête des Toillies for a short distance.
I have attached a gpx file with the locations and names of all of the peaks, if you search for the peaks on either Camp2Camp or AltitudeRando you will be able to find descriptions of the routes up them.
There are actually 44 peaks on the list, which is because the border of the park is in discussion and the Val des Escreins may soon become part of it, so I have included La Mortice Nord, Pic de Houerts, Pointe d'Escreins and Pic de Panestrel as well, just in case.
Comments
Hey ! I have held such a list for a long time. If you take proeminence of 30m as your criteria, you are missing quite a few. I have 57 peaks with a 30m proeminence in my list altought some are debatable due to the fact that the proeminence is sometimes estimated without certainty. I think using a proeminence of 50m (48-51 peaks) or 100m (33 peaks) actually makes the list more interesting.
You also have to know that some summits (Peouvou Nord as an example) are technically out of the PNR by only a few meters, but I still personnaly count them as "in".
Tête des Toillies, which I've climbed is not the hardest one. Pic des Houerts, Peouvou Nord, Punta Roma or Punta Gastaldi are in my opinion of a greater difficulty. But by far the hardest climb is for sure "Aiguilles de la Traversette" (3023m) where you might have to climb in the fifth grade of french rock climbing. For a few of those peaks (most of the time those without a name or "Crête Bertine" (3136m)), no description is findable online (on gulliver, altituderando, camptocamp or any other).
Anyways, I'm happy to see someone interested in this peak list, as I am ! I have climbed 20/57 and all of the southern ones (those around Ceillac) except for Pic des Houerts and Pic des Heuvières.
If you are interested by my list, contact me :)
Hi Tom,
Thanks for your message, I have not logged on here for some time (over a year it seems) so have only just seen it. I would be keen to see your list of 57 peaks.
I initially went with 50m prominence but that took Tête de la Cula out of the list, with the col between it and Tête de Longet being exactly 30m lower than it, and I thought that both peaks should really be in the list. I have just realised that when I did that, I did not go and check for more peaks that now made it into the list due to the change from 50m to 30m.
The new charter of the park has just come out, and the Escreins valley is no longer in the park and given the politics of Vars it looks like it will never come back into the park, so I need to remove the 5 peaks that are outside the new boundary now.
What you said about the Péouvou Nord, I think that is most likely a cartography error, I have noticed quite a few errors in this area, it looks like the IGN has not been very thorough. For example they show the peak of the Tête de la Cula about 80m SE of its actual location.
Hopefully see you on the hill one day.
Cheers
Phil