Photo : Florian Pépellin / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Le cirque de Saint-Même
The Saint-Même cirque is a natural cirque at the eastern end of the Chartreuse massif, straddling Savoie and Isère, at around 900 metres' altitude. It lies within the Hauts de Chartreuse national nature reserve.
The Guiers Vif rises here. This river long served as a border between the Dauphiné and the Kingdom of Savoy, and today marks the boundary between the two départements. Its waters gush from underground springs at the foot of a high Urgonian limestone cliff of about 500 metres.
Four waterfalls descend from it. The Grande Cascade and the Pisse du Guiers are among them. Just above the springs, you can make out the entrance to a cave through which the river once flowed out. The cirque is also a caving site: it includes notably the Guiers Vif cave and the Mort-Rû cave, developed over about 8,000 metres, as well as the Masques cave. The dipper, a river bird, frequents the stream. The flow of the waterfalls depends on rain and snowmelt: they are fullest in spring.
