A natural site developed since 1869, the Gorges du Fier are one of the unmissable tourist sites of Haute-Savoie. Less than 10 km from Annecy and only 15 minutes from Rumilly, this spectacular canyon will amaze young and old. A striking walk and an open-air geology lesson!
Rumilly-Albanian is the gateway to many remarkable natural and built sites. The Gorges du Fier, in the town of Lovagny in Haute-Savoie, are one of them. Tumultuous torrent taking its source at the foot of Mont Charvin (2019 m), the Fier has hollowed out the rock here, creating this tortuous parade at the bottom of which it rumbles.
Thanks to a footbridge nearly 300 meters long, fixed to the side of the rock overhanging the Fier, the visitor walks inside this narrow canyon, in complete safety and without any difficulty.
The geological and geomorphological curiosities are linked: pots of giants, chaos of boulders, walls sculpted by water, illuminated by play of shadows and lights, favorable to the imagination. Halfway, a measurement scale indicates the heights reached by the water during major floods. The most impressive dates back to September 30, 1960, when the riverbed rose to 27 meters above its average level.
At the end of the gorges, the route leads to the Mer des Rochers, a vast labyrinth of cracked blocks, in which the Fier flows more wisely, before resuming its normal course in the plains of the Albanian, towards the Rhône. The contrast is striking. After the noise and the fury of the canyon, absolute calm or almost! You have to listen to the melody of the torrent, lost in the labyrinth of laps.
The nearby Clairière des Curieux is an educational space giving the keys to this geological heritage, valued at the end of the XNUMXth century by the Annecy architect Marius Vallin. On the island of legends, poetry and enchantment around popular stories linked to the place. Finally, with the very last space on the Mer des Rochers, L'ImagiFier, room for the ephemeral and the imaginary ...
"The magic of the Gorges du Fier, wonders of nature, is the contrast between two atmospheres: one full of surprises inside the gorges, and the other, calm, unchanging of the Sea of Rocks"
Pierre Montmasson, director of the Gorges du Fier
