Col du Chat
The Col du Chat is a mountain pass located in France, in the commune of La Chapelle-du-Mont-du-Chat, in the French department of Savoie in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. It crosses the Mont du Chat in the Jura Mountains, overlooking Lac du Bourget opposite the town of Aix-les-Bains.
Although it has never been crossed by a main transalpine route, the pass has been crossed by a road since ancient times, and its use has often gone beyond the strictly local, at least until the Chat tunnel was opened: Montaigne, for example, used it on his way back from Italy. Today, it is used mainly by tourists, as a climb for cyclists, or as a starting point for hikes to Mont du Chat.
Because of the region's particular flora and fauna, the pass is located within the perimeter of and close to natural zones of ecological, faunal and floristic interest and Natura 2000 reserves. The pass is open all year round, with no winter shutdowns.
Toponymy
The Col du Chat is also known as Col du Mont-du-Chat or Col de Chevelu.The first known instance of the name Mont du Chat appears in 1209; older texts refer to it as mons munitus or mons Munni. It first appears in the Latin forms mons Catus, mons Catti or montem Cati, then montem du Chat at the end of the 15th century.
In his toponymic study of the Franco-Provençal linguistic zone, G. R. Wipf, after listing a collection of hypotheses on the toponymy of the mountain, the dent and the Col du Chat, tentatively concludes that "the least we can say is that this is a contested toponym". He returns to the subject later in the book, devoting five pages to it.
The word "''chat''" taken literally
A first thesis links the name of the range and pass to the legend of the Chapalu, a "well-known Savoyard legend" according to Wipf. Supported in the work of medievalists and folklorists, this interpretation has little support among linguists. Alphonse Gros assumes that the legend "was only invented to provide an explanation for this curious designation." Wipf, without believing in this explanation either, cannot follow it: insofar as the encounter with the chapalu appears in the Arthurian cycle, where it is supposed to take place near "Lac de Lausanne", it is not an ad hoc construction developed around Lac du Bourget.Dauzat and Rostaing, for their part, explain the name of the mountain's "dent du Chat" by its shape, which they believe evokes that of a cat's canine. Wipf is not convinced either, as his own visual impression of the mountain hardly evokes a feline feature.
A Franco-Provençal word
For his part, Henri Jaccard considers the Franco-Provençal word sya, meaning saw. He notes the existence of a 1582 source in which the Col du Chat is called "la Sciaz", and links this to the names of places in the Vaud Alps, where the toponymy is explained by the presence of a ridge evoking the teeth of a saw.Personal names
The deformation of people's proper names has been suggested. Without dwelling on this possibility, Gros points out that similar-sounding names can be found in charters from the south-east of France: Dominus Rodulfus Cati or even Johannes dictus Chat. André Palluel-Guillard, referring to "other scholars" with no further details, refers to the Catulli, a family name that appears on two inscriptions preserved in the Bourget crypt.The version supported by Gros is a variant of the previous one: the mountain takes its name from the hamlet of Chevelu, a hamlet whose toponymy he in turn explains by the nickname Capillutis of an inhabitant with a remarkable hair.
A Celtic root
Two hypotheses refer to Gallic deities: referring to "Joanne", Palluel-Guillard evokes a deformation of Thuat, a spelling of the name of the god Teutates. A second, undoubtedly more serious, is Wipf's mention of the possibility of a common root between "Chat" and "Chambéry", both of which could derive from the name of the legendary king Caturix.The hypothesis favored by Wipf is derivation from a Celtic root car or cal, designating mountain in pre-Celtic languages. In his view, this root can be found in many Savoyard names, particularly that of Chamonix; this latter connection makes sense, as Wipf also believes he can distinguish a common Celtic root moniz, also designating mountain, in the ancient name of Mont du Chat and the name "Chamonix." Gros, for his part, explains mons Munitus by a Latin etymology: a via munita or iter munitum, designating a road or path that required development.
Finally, referring to "Mailland", Palluel-Guillard suggests a derivation from the Celtic root chai, designating a fight or ambush.
Geography
Location
The Col du Chat lies at an altitude of 638 metres. It separates the Mont du Chat, at 1,496 meters above sea level, to the south-southwest, with the Cornillon rock immediately above the pass at around 250 meters, from the Mont de la Charvaz, at 1,158 meters above sea level, to the north. The pass overlooks Lac du Bourget, one kilometer to the east on the Savoie Propre side, by over 400 meters. To the west, it overlooks the Rhône valley by more than 300 meters, on the Savoyard Foreland slope. It lies 1.5 kilometers north-west of Bourdeau, which it overlooks by more than 330 meters, and 2 kilometers south-south-west of La Chapelle-du-Mont-du-Chat, a village set on the edge of the anticline that overlooks Lac du Bourget by more than 400 meters. It lies 1.5 kilometers above the village of Saint-Jean-de-Chevelu, 320 meters below the pass to the west-northwest. The Chat tunnel passes under the mountain 500 metres from the pass, to the south-south-west.Geology
The pass is cut into the Kimmeridgian limestone of the Mont du Chat. Its bedrock is crossed by a northwest–southeast fault, called the Col du Chat fault, which runs transversely to the anticline. This fault is visible from Saint-Jean-de-Chevelu to Lac du Bourget. It shifts the Cretaceous strata some 500 m to the northeast, suggesting the presence of a detachment. However, cartographic data show no displacement of the Jurassic strata at the level of the fault, and only a very slight displacement at the level of the Mont du Chat fault, crossed by the Col du Chat fault at the western base of the anticline, 1 km north-west of the Col du Chat. The thinness of the Urgonian limestones beneath the first Miocene marine transgression layers at Bourdeau, in contrast to the thicker limestones to the north of the fault at the eastern base of the anticline on the edge of Lac du Bourget, suggests that the fault was formed during the uplift of the Jura at the same period, resulting in a difference in uplift between Mont de la Charvaz and Mont du Chat. The pass was then formed by erosion, before the Miocene marine transgression.Erosion of the pass was accentuated during glacial periods and its low altitude, compared to that of neighbouring peaks, allowed the Isère glacier to pass through, as did the Col de l'Épine, during the last glaciation and the formation of the Lyon glacial lobe.
Climate
The mountain climate of the Col du Chat is slightly milder due to the nearby Lac du Bourget, which moderates the Aix region. Two weather stations are located nearby: station no. 73008003 at Aix-les-Bains, 3km to the east, and station no. 73051001 at Mont du Chat, 4km to the south.Fauna and flora
The Col du Chat is located in a closed forest zone. The south-facing slope of the pass is populated by beech trees, while the north-facing slope is populated by various deciduous trees associated with conifers in the western part.The cavities on the western slopes of the pass are home to several different species of bat, including the barbastelle, the grey long-eared and the greater horseshoe, Europe's largest Rhinolophus species. Bird species recorded in the vicinity of the pass include the European nightjar, the Short-toed Eagle, the peregrine falcon, the Woodlark, the European Bee-eater and the Eurasian scops owl. Insects are represented by the great capricorn beetle, southern damselfly and the dusky large blue.
History and heritage
Gallo-Roman period
The Col du Chat was probably already a passageway in Gallic times, if not earlier. Several scholars, such as Albanis Beaumont, Jean André Deluc and John Antony Cramer around 1800, and later the historian Theodor Mommsen, hypothesized that the pass was used by Hannibal to cross the Alps on his way to Italy; this outdated thesis has now been invalidated.A network of Roman roads gradually opened up conquered Gaul. The route of the Praetorian road, which linked Vienne to Milan via the Little St Bernard Pass and crossed the Épine-Chat range above a mysterious Labisco about halfway between Augustum and Lemencum, is not precisely known. However, it is known that it did not cross the range at the Col du Chat, but at a point further south. Although the Col du Chat was not on the transalpine route, it was nevertheless crossed by a "vicinale" road, a more local route for commercial traffic, with a width of around four meters, as opposed to the six meters used by the " Praetorian" roads.
Roman remains were visible on the pass until the mid-19th century; only a few lapidary inscriptions remained, but these have been preserved. These remains are attested to by several travel reports. Alphonse d'Elbène, abbot of Hautecombe, wrote at the end of the 16th century:
More recently, Albanis Beaumont and Prefect refer to a "temple to Mercury." Contemporary archaeologists are not as assertive as these travelers of two hundred years ago, and the nature of this lost structure is a matter of debate: while it is indeed possible that it was a temple to Mercury, others think it was a stopover on the way to the pass. In this second hypothesis, the inscriptions would have come from a simple oratory inside the stopover.
An excavation campaign led by J.-B. Mercier, from 1935 to 1937, uncovered the remains of several small houses near the pass, containing eight skeletons, clearly the victims of assailants, and a few coins from the 4th century. A second campaign, led by Claude Duc in 1939, uncovered a larger treasure trove of 240 coins from the 2nd and 4th centuries, some 100 metres from the hamlet.