Smart Travels: Hiking Morne Langevin

Sunday 17 May 2020

Hiking Morne Langevin

For the first Saturday after lockdown ended in Reunion my husband and I decided to head up to the mountains, and we soon found ourselves at Pas de Sable near the volcano, starting a hike to Morne Langevin.

sign at the start of the hike showing the altitude: 2350m

Morne Langevin is a hike I hadn't done in about 25 years so it was interesting to do once again. However this time we only went to the viewpoint and back, without doing the longer loop walk. The weather was quite cold (12-13°C) as befits the altitude and time of year, but as it was sunny and not windy, and we soon warmed up when we hiked.

3D map of the terrain showing the hike in yellow (source)

looking across Plaine des Sables

As we hiked along the path we started to see the lunar landscape of Plaine des Sables, and as we got further we could see the summit of Piton de La Fournaise to our left.

summit of Piton de la Fournaise in the middle-right background

Once we started hiking we realised the ground was covered by thousands of Pele's hairs from the last eruption in March 2020. As these strands are very fine and difficult to photograph I filmed one blowing in the breeze.

much of the path looked like this

The type of vegetation at this altitude is moorland with few plants growing, however those that do grow are generally endemic. They've adapted to the harsh climate, and there can be large temperature variations, strong wind, heavy rain, and periods of drought. Some plants have small leaves to avoid being withered by the sun while others, like the Hubertia tomentosa, have little hairs to capture any moisture in the air.

In the end it took us just over 2 hours to hike the round-trip distance of 7.3 km.

almost there!

end of the hike

As we'd started hiking mid-afternoon and the sun sets at about 5:45pm at this time of year, we had a fantastic view of the sun setting over the centre of the island as we drove back down.