9/3 Auron to Roya

A short walk up an over a low pass of 6600 ft should have been easy - and would have been were it not for the downpour we awoke too. It's hard to walk out the door into pouring rain and we had actually not had the experience for over a month. The hotel proprietor told us how when it's nice all over France it storms here and the reverse. Indeed a low over the Mediterranean was pummeling Italy and providing the cold / wind / rain and snow as it spilled across the Alps.
The trail out of town was muddy and running as a stream in spots. It winds through the woods toward the pass as the rain bucketed. Streams overflowed and ran brown. Wearing my thermals the effort to climb kept us warm until some gusts of josh wind and sheets of rain smashed us - the cold blew through everything I was wearing!
Chilled we crested and began the descent finding the wind and cold less on this side but once chilled we had to keep moving. It was a traversing descent past many ruined granges and at one point a chapel. A bit warmer lower down the rain didn't let up. I packed my camera deep in the pack and took only a few shots this dayя. Inevitably we came to a roaring stream which needed crossing. It was braided but the sides were saturated and collapsing. I saw a quick opportunity and we got across with rocks washing away as we stepped on them. Indeed the crossing vanished before our eyes, and others would later need to drop downstream to cross.
The rest of the way to Roya was uneventful and we reached the Gite early where the propritor produced a nice lunch is soup cheese bread and wine. A hot shower and dry clothes made a big difference - except for the safely protected contents, EVERYTHING was soaked. Eventually the radiators were on and aggressive drying made the next day comfortable albeit stinky.....