The village of Les Mées. In the blue circle the cave, at a height of 65 meters. In the distance, the Durance
The mystery of Les Mées
August 8, 2015
The village of Les Mées. In the blue circle the cave, at a height of 65 meters. In the distance, the Durance
First of all it is a geological curiosity. Opposite the village lies the Durance valley. Once, this was a powerful glacier that stretched far to the south. The Les Mées massif is what remains of its moraines, a mixture of earth and pebbles, which geologists call "poudingue" (a French deformation of the English word "pudding"). The moraine has been eroded by rain and wind. Curiously, overlooking the village, this strange cliff has remained, whose "capucins" reach 117 meters high and stand, overhanging, above the valley.
On the left, you see the beginning of a green valley, which in fact acts as a catchment basin for rain. Before the French Revolution of 1789 this basin was free of vegetation. When heavy rains came rushing down, the village was flooded. At that time the people of Les Mées asked the young republic to sort this out. Its engineers then had a gallery 450 meters long dug, whose exit you will easily discover directly below the cave. It is a fun walk, to be done with a simple flashlight and sneakers, with the family. This tunnel leads into the valley, where the engineers had placed dams to break the violence of the floods and redirect all that water toward this "penstock". It continued as a viaduct, of which a few fragments remain, and which sent the water back toward the Durance. As this system prevented the rains from sweeping everything away in their path, the vegetation has grown and now the dams and penstock would become useless.
What is strange, in this cliff, is this:
This crevice, located at a height of 65 meters.
Let's move a little closer.
Close-up
What is that cross doing up there, who placed it, when and how?
The problem is not simple because, even with today's means, the poudingue is impossible to climb. This cross is mentioned in chronicles of the 15th century. I was the first to approach it, 48 years ago, by descending on a rope. Impossible to touch it: the cliff is overhanging, and it is moreover this situation that has been able to protect these woods from the rain. A few years later a climber, Patrice Cordier, was able to touch it for the first time by descending on a rope along a side gully, then by making a traverse while driving many pitons into this problematic material. In doing so, he brought back a fragment of it.
I examined the object several years later. To anchor into the "poudingue" the technique consists of drilling to a depth of 50 cm with a long 2 cm diameter bit, driven by a cordless drill, then sealing a threaded rod into this hole with resin. With such a technique, which was implemented and once again made it possible to touch this cross, it would then be possible to install a platform and allow archaeologists to work at a height of 65 meters, hoisting them with a winch and a harness. I will explain all this.
If you look at the previous photo, you will see that there is a strange formation at the top of this crevice. Here is a view with a telephoto lens:
.
At the bottom and on the right you can make out whitish streaks which are crow droppings; the crows nest up there and disappear ... no one knows where.
Since I became interested in this cross I quickly put forward the hypothesis that it could have been installed ... from above. From below one cannot see how people, in those distant times, could have proceeded to put it in place. This dark disc would then be the visible part of a slab made of poudingue. As for the cross, well, the angel who, on the day of the last judgment, will go to fetch the remains of the gas worker buried up there must not forget it.
When I was a climbing instructor in Belgium, I happened to find, in a cliff near Dinant, a cave with a tomb carved into the limestone, perfectly cut, parallelepiped-shaped, but empty. Men therefore had themselves buried in cliffs (like the Dogon). But that one had not been lucky. His tomb must have been looted and his remains scattered.
Would the Les Mées cave and its cross signal the presence of a tomb? If so, access would have been provided by means of a tunnel (the poudingue is dug very quickly and easily). In that case, what better way to hide its entrance than to build a chapel on top of it? Below, the Saint Roch chapel, 250 meters as the crow flies, or mole path, from our cross.
The Saint Roch chapel
And to finish, the presumed layout of the access tunnel:
Indiana Jones near you ....
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