Puy de Dôme

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Puy de Dôme
The Puy de Dôme volcano

The Puy de Dôme volcano

height 1465  m
location France
Mountains Massif Central
Coordinates 45 ° 46 '22 "  N , 2 ° 57' 52"  E Coordinates: 45 ° 46 '22 "  N , 2 ° 57' 52"  E
Puy de Dôme (Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes)
Puy de Dôme
Type Lava dome
rock Trachyte
Age of the rock 11,000 years

The 1465 meter high Puy de Dôme volcano is located in the Puy-de-Dôme department of the same name and belongs to the Massif central in the Auvergne in central France . It is the highest mountain of the Chaîne des Puys , the chain of the Puys. Southwest of the Chaîne des Puys lies the group of also dormant volcanoes of the Monts Dore .

It is located about fifteen kilometers from Clermont-Ferrand , which it overlooks by about a thousand meters. Since 1956 there has been a transmitter for VHF and television on the Puy de Dôme .

geology

The Puy de Dôme consists of two lava domes made of trachyte , which 11,000 to 10,000 years ago pushed out one after the other over old cinder cones. On the flanks there are breccias and deposits of glowing clouds ( ignimbrite ) from the collapse of the first cathedral. Large parts are also covered by the tephra of the neighboring Kilian crater , which collapsed 8550 years ago.

Since the volcano is one of the monogenetic volcanoes , which usually only had one eruption or one eruption phase, a new eruption is unlikely. However , this cannot be assumed for the volcanic field of the Chaîne des Puys as a whole, as there have repeatedly been phases of rest of several 10,000 years.

history

Remains of the Roman Temple of Mercury on the Puy de Dôme

The summit has already inspired the construction of temples and places of worship in ancient times . A Celtic sanctuary of Dumiatis , hence the name podium Dumiatis , was followed by a temple of Mercury in Roman times ; in the Middle Ages there was a pilgrimage chapel on the summit . Traces of the sanctuaries were uncovered by excavations.

On September 19, 1648 , the physicist Blaise Pascal, together with his brother-in-law Florin Périer, carried out the famous experiment "vide dans le vide" on the Puy de Dôme, which refuted the Aristotelian hypothesis of the horror vacui , according to which invisible vapors fill the vacuum. Pascal proved that the air pressure is based on the weight of the air above the location by measuring the pressure difference between Clermont-Ferrand and the summit of the Puy de Dôme with a mercury barometer and thus being able to roughly calculate the specific weight .

It was not until the middle of the 18th century , when people began to study nature scientifically, that the volcanic origin of these mountains was discovered. Until then, it was believed that they were gigantic fortresses built by the Romans .

When the departments were created in 1790 during the French Revolution , the volcano gave this part of Auvergne its name. Originally, people wanted to name their department Monts Dore , after the place where the 1885 meter high Puy de Sancy is the highest point in the department. Some citizens, led by Gaultier de Biauzat, a member of parliament from Clermont-Ferrand, were of the opinion that this name, which can also be understood as "golden mountains", could lead the capital Paris to charge excessive taxes. The Auvergnaten therefore decided on the department name Puy-de-Dôme .

tourism

South side of the volcano with summit cloud
Puy de Dôme - 136.jpg
Summit of the Puy de Dôme with radio station and observatory

There are hiking trails and a road on the Puy de Dôme. A paid shuttle bus ran on this until 2009 in the main travel season, otherwise it was open. Until 1925 it was also possible to get to the mountain from Clermont-Ferrand with a narrow-gauge railway with Fellschem drive . A cog railway has been in operation on the route since June 2012, and it takes 12 minutes to get from the valley station up the mountain. In the main travel season it runs every half hour. The mountain station is at an altitude of 1406 meters.

From the observatory with a small museum on the summit you sometimes have a fascinating view over a sea of ​​clouds, which is related to the inversion weather conditions that often occur here . On a clear day you can see around 100 inactive volcanoes at a distance of around 30 kilometers. A spacious hiking trail with information boards leads around the summit plateau. The starting point is the mountain station of the rack railway.

The area is part of the Volcans d'Auvergne Regional Nature Park .

Rack railway

Train of the railway in the valley station

From 1907 to autumn 1925, a 14.7 kilometer long railway with a central rail according to the Fell / Hanscotte system ran from Place Lamartine in Clermont-Ferrand at 390 meters to the mountain station at 1,414 meters on the Puy de Dôme. A road was subsequently built on the route.

On May 26, 2012, a new rack railway was opened under the name Panoramique des Dômes . The construction of the rack railway to the Puy de Dôme began in 2010. As a first step, the maintenance halls (Center de Maintenance), a valley station (Maison de Site) and a mountain station (Gare de Sommet) were built. In 2011 the actual cog railway was built. Then the test operation began, which had to go through all climatic conditions before the technical approval was granted. The rack railway is one of currently five (as of 2018) existing rack railways in France, next to the Métro Lyon , the Tramway du Mont-Blanc , the Chemin de fer du Montenvers and the Chemin de Fer de la Rhune .

The 5.3-kilometer route largely follows the uphill lane of the existing road, with the valley-side lane remaining as an emergency and rescue lane. About 300 meters before the summit, the road crosses the cogwheel train route, so that the cogwheel train enters the Gare de Sommet below the street level at the summit. The rack entrance is on the depot side of the valley station, so that the locomotives do not leave the rack section during normal operation.

The track width of the line is 1000 millimeters. There are Y-sleepers employed, the rack is of the type TN Strub 70. This relatively newly developed rack is the same as the rails are welded seamlessly. The smallest radius is 70 meters, the greatest slope 155  per thousand . The planning and execution of the superstructure work was carried out by the Swiss companies Sersa and Laurent Membrez. The railway is electrified with 1500 volts direct current.

The four locomotives were ordered from Stadler in Bussnang , Switzerland. The vehicles are self-driving both in the rack area and in the depot area in the adhesion area.

Cycling increase

The road from Clermont-Ferrand to Puy de Dôme is one of the most famous climbs of the Tour de France and overcomes an altitude difference of over 1000 meters over 14 kilometers, with an average gradient of 7.5 percent.

Between the 1950s and 1980s, a total of 13 Tour de France mountain arrivals took place here. Fausto Coppi was the first to triumph in 1952. The duel between Jacques Anquetil and Raymond Poulidor at the Puy de Dôme on the 1964 Tour is considered a legendary moment in Tour history. In 1975 Eddy Merckx was beaten by a spectator shortly before the goal.

After 1988 the Puy de Dôme was no longer used, mainly for logistical and ecological reasons.

Tour de France stage winner at the Puy de Dôme

Web links

Commons : Puy-de-Dôme  - collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

  • Johannes Baier (2020): The Chaîne des Puys in the Auvergne. - Fossils 37 (2): 46-56.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Pichler and Thomas Pichler: volcanic areas of the earth . Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, Heidelberg 2007, ISBN 978-3-8274-1475-5 , page 49
  2. ↑ Blaise Pascal: Récit de la grande expérience de l'équilibre des liqueurs, projectée par le sieur BP [Blaise Pascal] pour l'accomplissement du traicté qu'il a promis dans son abbrégé touchant le vuide, et faite par le sieur FP [ Florent Perier] en une des plus hautes montagnes d'Auvergne , Verlag C. Savreux, Paris 1648 [1]
  3. ↑ Planète Puy de Dôme: Le futur train à crémaillère le Panoramique des Dômes (French)
  4. ↑ bahnonline.ch: Sersa Group builds rack railway on the Puy de Dome
  5. ↑ The royal stages of the Tour de France: Puy de Dôme. In: arte . June 28, 2013, archived from the original on July 7, 2013 ; Retrieved June 28, 2013 .
  6. ↑ Le dico du tour: Le Puy-de-Dôme dans le Tour de France (French)