Vieux Chaillol
3,163 m, the high point of the Champsaur

Vieux Chaillol is the high point of the Champsaur, the valley that runs north from Gap in the French Southern Alps, and at 3,163 m (10,377 ft) it stands on the western rim of the Écrins massif. Step back anywhere in the valley and you see it: a dark pyramid closing the skyline to the northeast, with nothing its size for miles in any direction. No glacier guards it. You walk up, in a day, no rope and no crampons in summer.

At Altimood we have it in front of us all year, and when someone asks for a hard day out with no exposure, this is one of the first summits we put forward. It also settles the I have been over 10,000 feet question without turning into an alpine route (the Pic Turbat, one valley over, is the other kind) or into mountaineering.

This article covers the 2 ways up, with the figures and the trace for each.

2 routes to the summit of Vieux Chaillol

The summit is reached from 2 valleys, and the choice comes down to how long a day you want rather than to technical difficulty. Neither side has an exposed section, both ask for legs that have done some work.

Those are walking times only, breaks excluded. They come out of our own calculator, run on the distance and the ascent of the 2 traces on this page: 4 methods (Naismith, the German Alpine Club formula, the Swiss Alpine Club formula, effort-kilometers), averaged and rounded up to the next half hour. On a day that climbs this much the 4 disagree by a wide margin, from 5 hrs 50 to 10 hrs 20 for the Chaillol side alone, so read 8 hrs as a midpoint and move it for your own pace, your pack and how long you sit down.

Both sit high on our difficulty scale, 4 out of 5 from Chaillol 1600 and 5 out of 5 for the Champoléon loop. If you are unsure where you fall on it, the 7-question level test gives you a marker in 2 minutes.

For a Colorado reference, the Chaillol side has the shape of a standard 14er day: 10 miles and 5,120 ft, close to Mount Elbert by the northeast trail with a few hundred feet more climbing. What it does not have is the altitude. The summit here, 10,377 ft, sits barely above the height of an Elbert trailhead, so the thin air that shortens a 14er day never arrives, and you can push the pace on the last 300 m the way you would at home on a ridge at half the elevation.

Both routes want an early start. The top third is bare rock on either side, with no shelter, and the July and August afternoon storms leave you nowhere quick to go.

Vieux Chaillol from Chaillol 1600

This is the short way, and by a wide margin the busier one. The small ski village of Chaillol 1600 puts the trailhead at 1,600 m, which removes 300 m of climbing compared with the valley floor. The trail rises steadily to the col de la Pisse, then traverses to the cabane des Parisiens before working up through scree and slabs to the summit.

It is an out-and-back: you come down the way you went up. That keeps the logistics simple, and it means you can turn around at any point without being committed, which counts on a day this long. At the cabane des Parisiens, the canal de Mal-Cros and its stone tunnels are worth the detour if you are ahead of schedule.

If the day is short or the sky looks wrong, the pic Queyrel (2,433 m) leaves from the same parking lot and asks a good deal less: 11 km and 730 m of climbing, with a natural rock arch on the ridge and a view that already takes in the whole Champsaur.

• Trailhead: Chaillol 1600 (Saint-Michel-de-Chaillol), 1,600 m, 5,250 ft
• Distance: 16 km round trip, 10 miles
• Ascent: +1,560 m, 5,120 ft
• Time: 8 hrs
• Grade: 4/5 (ascent, length, rocky ground up high)
• Season: July to October

• Distance :↔ 16.1 km
• Dénivelé positif :↗ 1563 m
• Dénivelé négatif :↘ 1567 m

Vieux Chaillol as a loop from Champoléon

The Champoléon side starts 325 m lower, in the Drac Blanc valley, and the natural way to close the loop is over the refuge du Tourond.

At 23.5 km and 1,960 m, this is one of the biggest hiking days in the Champsaur. It goes in a day for someone fit who leaves before first light, but the version that holds up best is to break it with a night out, bivouac style, high on the ridge.

• Trailhead: Les Borels (Champoléon), 1,275 m, 4,180 ft
• Distance: 23.5 km loop, 14.6 miles
• Ascent: +1,960 m, 6,430 ft
• Time: 11 hrs
• Grade: 5/5 (length, ascent, a full day above 2,000 m)
• Season: July to October

• Distance :↔ 23.6 km
• Dénivelé positif :↗ 1957 m
• Dénivelé négatif :↘ 1956 m

The view from the summit

At 3,163 m, Vieux Chaillol has no neighbor of its own size for several kilometers, and the view runs a clean 360. North and east, the summits of the Écrins National Park line up, the Olan and the Sirac in front. Southwest, the hedged farmland of the Champsaur drops away toward Gap, with the cliffs of the Dévoluy behind. On a clear day the Vercors closes the horizon to the northwest and Mont Ventoux shows up due south.

Ibex live on both sides of the mountain and let themselves be watched, from where you stand and no closer. Chamois hold the grassy slopes lower down, and marmots take over anything that looks like an alpine pasture. Early morning and the last 2 hours of light are when all 3 are out and moving; through the heat of the middle of the day the ibex shift onto shaded rock under the crest and are much harder to pick out.

The canal de Mal-Cros, water routed through the mountain

At the col de Riou Beyrou (2,695 m), where the cabane des Parisiens stands, a stone-lined trench heads due east toward the lac de Mal-Cros. This is the canal de Mal-Cros, and it earns the detour. An imperial decree of 1853 allowed the Champsaur to capture the meltwater of the upper Mal-Cros valley, on the Champoléon side, and carry it through to the other side of the mountain to irrigate the meadows of Saint-Michel-de-Chaillol, Saint-Julien and Saint-Bonnet. The intake sits at 2,818 m, the distribution point at Chaillol at 1,750 m, and between the two the canal crosses the col de Riou Beyrou, then the col de la Pisse (2,354 m).

What survives on the ground can be walked: channels cut in dressed stone, traverses hacked into the cliff face, and a vaulted tunnel 114 m long under a scree slope that you cross by headlamp. The cabane des Parisiens served as the site hut for the work crews. Water reached Chaillol in 1872, the branches toward Saint-Bonnet were finished in 1878, and the ones to Buissard and Bénévent never were. An association has been restoring the upper sections since 2004, so that stretch is waymarked and carries interpretation panels.

Climbing Vieux Chaillol with a guide in 2026

The mountain guides at Altimood live in the Champsaur-Valgaudemar and lead this ascent as a day out, in a small group. Over 8 to 10 hours the work is mostly pacing and reading the sky. If your pace leaves room for it, the stops are where the wildlife, the plants and the geology of Vieux Chaillol get their share of the day.

Our other trips in the Champsaur-Valgaudemar

1. 

   France | Southern Alps

   Écrins National Park Traverse

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   A 5-day guided trek through the wildest part of the French Alps.

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2. 

   France | Southern Alps

   Écrins Tour in 9 Days - Comfort

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   The GR54 stripped down to its highest passes, in 8 walking days, with a twin room and a daypack every evening.

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Vieux Chaillol is also the high point of the tour du Vieux Chaillol, the regional long-distance route that circles the massif in 4 to 6 days between the Champsaur and the Valgaudemar. If you are flying in, one summit is a thin reason to cross an ocean: the 9-day Écrins tour crosses this same country on its way around the massif, and a week built around your own dates and group can take Vieux Chaillol as its big day.

Practical information

Which map covers Vieux Chaillol?

The sheet you want is the TOP25 3437 OT (Champsaur, Vieux Chaillol), which covers both routes end to end. Above the cabane des Parisiens the waymarking thins out and the ground stops offering landmarks: up there you navigate on cairns, on the shape of the broad ridge and on the col below you. Take your bearing off the map before the cloud arrives rather than after.

When to climb Vieux Chaillol

July to October. Snow holds late on the summit section, and before early July the upper slopes ask for an ice axe and crampons rather than a pair of poles. September is the best month: the days are still long enough for the Champoléon loop, and the air is clearer for the view.

Vieux Chaillol in winter

The summit itself sits where committing snowshoe travel, ski touring and winter mountaineering meet. The valleys that lead to it are another matter: they make excellent snowshoe country, with lower objectives and days cut to the daylight you actually get.

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