Trail des 3 couvents
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Based in Saint-Laurent-du-Pont, France, in the heart of the Chartreuse massif, a regional natural park, the Trail des 3 Couvents offers three courses through some of the most historically layered terrain in the French Prealps.
The longest race, the Grande Chartreuse, runs for 50km amd includes 3,000m of vert. The course is a technical loop, dense with limestone cliffs and high alpine pastures, and runs past the Grande Chartreuse monastery before climbing the Col de Bovinant and Petit Som.
The Fétrus race covers 24km with 1,500m of climbing, and runs through the high pastures of plateau d’Arpison and the col de la Ruchère.
The shorter Piquetière is 13km long with 750m elevation gain, and passes through the Chartreuse forest in the shadow of the Grand Som peak. The Grande Chartreuse course can also be run as a two-person relay.
Saint-Laurent-du-Pont is about an hour north of Grenoble, France, and roughly an hour and a half from Lyon. The race name is a nod to the monastic history that defines this corner of the Alps. The Grande Chartreuse monastery, founded in 1084, is also the origin of Chartreuse liqueur, a centuries-old herbal digestif whose recipe of 130 plants is said to be known only by two monks. The former Fourvoirie distillery, where the liqueur was produced for decades before a 1935 landslide destroyed it, stood just outside Saint-Laurent-du-Pont.