This may come as a surprise to some people (but not many), we didn’t get started until after 10 this morning. I was so pissed off at the “Sham” express that I couldn’t fall asleep until almost 11 last night. Pam was snoring blissfully away by 9:20 so it didn’t bother her in the least. We gave up on finding anyone to help us out with the Eurail Pass. We don’t know what we’ll do about travel once we get done hiking.
With all that crap going through my head, I was not in a good mood at the start of the hike. Add in the fact that we couldn’t find the start of the trail and I was pretty ticked and ready to throw in the towel before we even got started. My mood started improving after we had climbed 100m (328′) and we started having great views of the town of Les Houches behind us–not that I stopped imagining ways to get my revenge on the “Sham” scum company (or Chase Visa for that matter since they offered no help).
When I get pissed, I get in a downward spiral and everything that’s ticked me off in the last few years bubbles to the surface. What could possibly tick off an easy going guy like me? Mainly, Pam’s family and the interactions I’ve had with them ranging from being called a fag, a Nazi, a liar, an abuser, and that I use Gestapo methods on the kids because I actually wouldn’t allow Sam to throw trash on the kitchen floor. None of which is true and my testimony at my FoFF trial will bear that out. The specialty of the house is that I’m always at fault and the cause of any problems, and if I react, I’m too thin skinned.
So, even though it was a beautiful day, clear blue sky, perfect hiking temperature, I was still not liking it. I was starting to make an additional list of things that piss me off about France: how hard it is to find suitable food for backpacking, how everything closes down when the weather is perfect for hiking in the mountains, how we couldn’t get assistance from the high mountain office, how we couldn’t find anyone to agree to receive Eurail passes in the mail for us, how the trail designers hate switchbacks: then I decided that this will be the last hike in France for the foreseeable future. I honestly don’t think we’ll come back and do the GR20.
All this was going through my head in the first 45 minutes of walking. While I was paused in the shade wiping the sweat off of my face, a young couple from Canada passed us. We got to talking to them and discovered they are on their honeymoon–truly. Only 3 weeks in a 2 month vacation. It was good to see them enjoying the TMB and made us feel good that we weren’t the only ones starting today. We asked them if a lot of people tried to discourage them from doing this trail. They responded that they hadn’t bothered talking to anyone in town about it, they were just doing it. This is exactly the way I had wanted to approach this trail, but someone who shall remain nameless (not me, so that should narrow it down in this hiking duo) wanted to do more research and make sure it was safe to proceed. This just opened us up to a lot of naysayers.
There’s 3 things Pam likes to do while hiking: 1) not walk so fast a to break a sweat, 2) never run out of breath, and 3) try to annoy me as much as possible–if she gets the opportunity to contradict me, all the better. Remember, even though we’ve only been married 8 months, we’ve been together 8 years so she knows all the buttons to push (having installed a large number of them).
Even with Pam’s efforts to slow the pace, we managed to make it up to the first pass in 2.5 hours with the book saying 2 hours and 15 minutes. There was a restaurant at the pass so we got coffees to sip while we had a break. As we were approaching the restaurant, we saw the Canadian couple head up to the high route. We weren’t feeling that ambitious since we haven’t had our packs on for a week.
The rest of our day was pretty much downhill and on roads. I made a few comparisons to the GR10 while we were hiking. Both trails measure distance in time (part of my settlement with FoFF prohibits me from mentioning how asinine this is) and both trails seem to abhor switchbacks. The differences are many so far: the area around Mont Blanc seems to be much more prosperous and populated (every house seems to be meticulously cared for), the people here believe in mowing grass and not using sheep to keep it short, there is noticeably fewer livestock around (and correspondingly less manure and flies).
I don’t understand why the trail isn’t crowded at this time of year. We practically have the trail to ourselves. As we were climbing out of one section of woods, we met an elderly Swedish man solo hiking. He was out for a few weeks hiking south on the GR5 which runs with the TMB in this area. He told us he had done this trail several years ago and that we were here at the perfect time of year. If you come even 2 weeks earlier, we would have been fighting crowds and high temperatures (and a freak 20 cm snowfall on the high part of the trail–but it snowed in the Sahara at the same time, so we’re counting on global climate change to keep us warm throughout our journey).
We decided to detour into Les Contamines in the hopes of finding some food for supper. Normally, we can count of the tourist info center to give us good information, but this is the first time they let us down. She told us two restaurants would open around 7. We went to the grocery store and bought sodas and chips (it takes high quality fuels to keep these finely tuned hiking machines in prime condition) to hold us for the 20 minute wait. After we primed the fuel systems, we could not find any open restaurants in town–in a resort town on a Saturday night. Literally, everything was closed except for one bar. When the French say this is the off season, they mean it.
Our food dreams were dashed, so we returned to the trail to find a camping spot. About 1/2 mile later we saw a sign for a CAF refuge and decided to head that way. Of course, it was closed, but it had flat ground around it so we set up our tent and had peanut butter and jelly wraps to top off the chips and cokes. My pack is already feeling 4 ounces lighter.
