We got started a full two hours and 15 minutes earlier than yesterday. That sure sounds better than we didn’t hit the trail until 12:15. There are excuses; I mean reasons, for the late start. 1) I couldn’t pry Pam’s ass out of bed because, 2) there was lightening outside, and 3) heavy rains soon followed, and 4) we are old and tired.
I woke up at 6:30 like we had planned. Meaning we had planned to set an alarm to get an early start, but didn’t. I woke up then because I had to pee for the 7th time in the night. (That’s the last time I have 3 cafe-au-laits, 2 cokes, 3.5 liters of water, .5 liters of tea plus a few other drinks in a single day.). It was already drizzling when I got up and Pam did her best acting job pretending she was asleep. I know she was acting because the other 6 times I got up, she said “you’ve got to pee again? You need to get checked.”
When we went to bed, we could hear what sounded to be a few thousand head of cattle above us on the the road. I went up to check them out–there were about 30, but they were very active. Through the course of the night, they passed through our camp heading downhill (so much for my theory that they won’t bother us in the thick forest). When the rain started this morning, they decided to head back up to the road. Several young ones were startled by our tent and even stuck their heads in the door to see what this pointed thing was. I almost started a stampede when I yelled “boo.”
The sun did come out and dry up everything once the rains stopped. That’s excuse #5 (my bad, reason #5), we had to dry out the tent before we could leave. We still had another 2300′ left in the climb we started yesterday. The guidebook was really off this time–it said 3 hours and 10 minutes to make the pass and we took 24 hours and 20 minutes. How can we effectively plan a trip with errors in time of this magnitude?
We had cloudy skies with occasional sun which is exactly the type of weather we prefer to hike in. By the time we made it to the lake we had planned to camp at last night, the clouds had grown very dark and angry looking. I heard thunder in the distance, but Pam, who has a 6th, 7th, and 8th sense for approaching storms couldn’t hear a thing. I made her turn and look to our backs, but she didn’t care. She’s fighting the flu today. (My symptoms are slightly better–I think I might eventually recover from this).
I thought the gourmet lunch we had at the first pass might make her feel better. It definitely helped me when my pack weight dropped 3 pounds (1 liter of water, 1/2 pound of cheese, and 1/4 pound of olives). There were a lot of people out compared to what we saw yesterday (only 1 person yesterday-there were 9 people at the pass when we arrived).
Coming down from the second pass (Col de Bassies) we could see a half dozen lakes and a great looking refuge above them all. Pam stated she was not coming out of the refuge until the storm passed. I took that to mean we were staying here tonight since there were dark clouds in all directions.
When we got to the refuge, it started to sprinkle a bit. We went in for a beer and went ahead and got beds for the night. I don’t think our “flus” are going to get any better tonight since we are getting supper and breakfast, but we need the meals since it has taken 2 days for us to make it where the guidebook says we should be in 4.5 hours after leaving town. At the rate we are going in this section of the GR10, Mont Blanc might be in jeopardy if we don’t pick up the pace. Pam asked if we couldn’t just live on the GR10 for the rest of our lives–not a good sign for a big day tomorrow.
Your frog is probably a female common toad, Bufo bufo, apparently they are larger than American toads.