Category: 2017 Tour du Mont Blanc

What a fitting way to end our stay in Switzerland. We got up and went down to breakfast which we didn’t include in our room because it was 18 Euros each. The typical breakfast in France was a croissant, a cup of coffee, and maybe a glass of OJ if they are a generous establishment all usually for 7 Euros max. For 18, I would expect an English breakfast and I’m not going to hold my breath.

Usually, I am an honest person to a fault, but today, I looked and acted more like my wife. When we got down to the dining room, they had mistakingly set us a table for breakfast. Since it was only bread, butter, jelly, OJ, and a pot of coffee, I went ahead and ate all while keeping my mouth shut. As soon as we got done eating, we hurried up and packed so we could get our before they figured out we had gotten $3 worth of food for free instead of the $40 they wanted us to pay. We dropped the key off at the counter and skiddaddled.

Karma is a bitch. Within a half hour of leaving the hotel, we lost the trail. We lost it in a big way. There were no markings anywhere. I went by the description in the book which only made things worse. We ended up climbing a few hundred meters in the wrong direction. We eventually found a marker for another trail, but at least we were kind of able to determine where we were. I, of course, remained calm throughout like I normally do. For some reason, Pam kept telling me to calm down or I would have a stroke (she has a vivid imagination–I was completely zen, as long as you look at zen after 20 cups of expresso).

By the time we got back down to the trail, we had wasted over an hour, spent all the energy we had stolen from breakfast (bread just doesn’t go that far energy wise when backpacking), and my feet were completely soaked from walking through all the dew soaked fields. I may have been a little peeved; hard to say in retrospect.

The only good thing we could say about the trail (when we finally found it) was that there were lots of switchbacks, so, even though it was steep, it was long as well. It was also very rocky–ankle breakers. We climbed up to some old ruins near the border and stopped for some lunch. All we had left was peanut butter and tortillas. Pam was in heaven because she has the illusion that peanut butter is healthy, holding steadfast to her belief that sugar is not the #2 ingredient behind peanuts. When I eat peanut butter wraps without any meat, I feel very woozy getting that jolt of sugar in my system without any protein to slow the sugar inrush.

I didn’t care though, I had France in my sights at last. I can honestly say I will never visit Switzerland again once I cross the border back into France. We have plans to drive to Austria after this trail, but I’ll be damned if I’ll drive through Switzerland to get there–looks like we’re making a longer loop south through northern Italy. There is only one way I’ll visit–if someone else pays my way. I would recommend the Tour du Mont Blanc to people, but only from the France/Swiss border to the Italy/Swiss border and staying out of Switzerland.

As we were making the final push to the border, we met a group of mountain bikers coming down. They stopped and asked me a question in French. I apologized and said I only spoke English. They asked again. “Is the trail this bad very far?” I responded with the truth–“Only to Italy. After that it gets nice again. But you get the privilege of paying three times as much for everything in the mean time. Is that France at the top?”

The higher we climbed, the colder it got. The wind was whipping and it really was not very enjoyable. By the time we got to the top, the clouds had broken up quite a bit, but the winds were terrible. I had all my layers on and I was still cold. We just wanted to drop down off the ridge as fast as possible to get out of the wind. True to form, we lost the trail once again. We exited Switzerland on another crappy break.

We could see Chamonix down the valley. Once we got down out of the wind, we were able to consult the map enough to figure out where we were. Of course, we were on the wrong trail, but it is an alternative option through a ski area. With the wind being so bad up above, we decided to head all the way down the valley to Montrachet and then head back up to Tre-la-Champ and get back on the main route.

The trail was not very well maintained through the ski area. We just kept heading down. It was muddy and full of sheep shit–we were definitely back in France. It was very difficult to stay motivated after the last 3 days in that country whose name shall not be spoken. I’ll say Voldemort but will not mention the country that little blond girl with pony tails serving hot chocolate comes from.

There were a lot of people out day hiking on the French side of the frontier. We knew they were French because if we caught up to them heading downhill, they would speed up and not let us pass. It felt good to be in familiar territory once again.

We made it down to the bottom of the valley and could see Chamonix ahead of us. We thought we’d try the local gite and detoured off the trail 1/2 mile to only find that the list the Office of High Mountain gave us was wrong. Even though they are supposed to open until October 15 AND they were inside preparing a large meal AND there were boots in the shoe room, they claimed to be closed. I asked if we could camp out back–they generously refused to let us stay.

We decided to hike on to the next town being Argentiere. It was all road walking along a fairly busy road, but we should be able to pick up the trail there. I don’t know if anyone remembers me complaining about my heels and ankles during the Camino, but all the road walking in Spain did a number on my tendons and I’ve yet to completely recover. Maybe if I put effort into stretching every evening, that might help, but I just don’t have the opportunity or energy left after I set up the tent, cook my wife dinner so she can take a nap after her arduous day of walking (all while carrying a 20+ pound pack), cleaning up the dishes, arranging the tent contents, digging a wind break around the tent so she doesn’t get wind burn if she has to exit the tent during the night, filtering water, and all the other myriad chores I am forced to perform to keep the Mrs happy. I’m not a super man and I’d like to get at least 30 minutes of sleep a night, so the stretching gets put on the back burner. Bottom line, I may have let slip my feet and heels were hurting. Pam saw a hotel up ahead and suggested we get a room for the night and eat at a restaurant so I could have an easy evening. Since I haven’t slept in 7 months, I acquiesced to her wishes.

We got a room without a view of Mont Blanc to save 10 Euros. We actually got a hotel room with our own bathroom with breakfast included (not in the bathroom, but in the dining area) all for 65 Euros (15 less than just a bunk bed cost us in that country whose name must not be spoken). Right across the street was a bar that was run by an Irishman–he even offered to cut our pizza into slices for us–I was in heaven.

The breakfast buffet at our hotel was one of the best we have had the entire trip. We overate, Pam stuffed her pockets, and we walked out like chipmunks with food in our mouths and cheeks bulging. We got our money’s worth and we didn’t have to steel silver or china to do it (it’s always scares me when Pam starts eyeing the expresso machines in a restaurant).

This was the start of another beautiful day of walking. We were climbing, but it wasn’t terrible despite all the grumbling I heard behind me on the trail. The fall colors were in all their glory and the French hikers were all tucked away in their cities waiting for the next holiday season–we had the trail to ourselves with the exception of an occasional goat or Japanese couple.

Even though it looked like the weather was going to hold most of the day, there was some clouds coming in, so we chose to stay to the main route and not take the higher alternative. We still had 2500′ of climbing to do, but we laughed at the feeble climbing after the GR10 (“ha ha you feeble climb”) which is not a particularly smart thing to do in a country that doesn’t want you there and is filled to the brim with the Alps. The 2500′ climb refused to end.

The trail followed the contour of the mountain and would throw in some really steep scree covered sections to get revenge for Pam’s laughing–I always respect the mountain, especially since I was carrying an extra 5 pounds of butter, jam, and fruit someone forced on me from breakfast.

By the time we made it almost to our high point of the day at hotel Bovine, the cloud cover was complete and the temperature was dropping. We had made the right decision to skip the high route today. On warmer and more crowded days, hotel Bovine serves refreshments to hikers. Once the French stop for the season, Hotel Bovine (which is a working dairy farm) closes shop for the winter. We still sat at their picnic tables and ate our lunch while we admired the view of the Swiss valley below us. At this point, the Swiss haven’t figured out a way to block the view unless you pay them, but I’m sure they have a plan in the works.

I’ll bet we didn’t see 10 people all day hiking. We did see a gaggle of women heading in the opposite direction that SOUNDED like a couple hundred people coming at us, but it was only 4 of them. I’m sure it was equal in magnitude to a typical Wednesday bridge game.

On the way down into Col de la Forclaz, we spotted some red on the trail. It looked like a runner came down hard on a stick and poked a hole through their shoe and foot. Every so often, there would be a big puddle of blood on the trail. A lone runner was ahead of us for a while and he kept stopping but would take off when he saw us. I’m not certain if he was the source of the blood or not. I know I don’t want that much blood near me if I’m camping in wolf, bear, or shark country (not that I’m worried about any of the aforementioned wildlife in Switzerland).

With some of the larger puddles we came upon, we were expecting to see him passed out on the trail. Just another example of our speed on the trail, an injured runner bleeding to death and having temporary blackouts from blood loss is still faster than we are on the trail. I was relieved to see the blood trail turn off the main path heading toward the closest parking area, even though Pam can handle blood, I get a little queasy just thinking about it. I remember when Suzanne cut her leg doing box jumps at cross fit. I went to get her a glass of water and almost passed out myself when I saw her leg. Everyone let her bleed and tended to me when they saw how white I turned.

We got into Col de la Forclaz fairly early. We were considering pushing on in the hopes of getting back into more reasonably priced France (there’s a phrase I thought I’d never utter–“reasonably priced France”), but the clouds had turned to mist which decided to just all out pour on us. It could have been worse–snow is always a possibility this time of year. We broke down and got a room in the Hotel de la Forclaz for a mere 90 Euros since they wouldn’t let us stay in the dorm.

Later, at dinner, we saw a couple of Brits chaperoning a group of 7-10 year old rich kids staying in the dorm area and were quite glad we didn’t stay with them. Kids of this age can be a problem on their own, but when they are used to servants, they just aren’t my chosen crowd. During dinner, they played a game of making three statements, 2 true and 1 false and then everyone has to ask questions to decide on the false statement. The first brat made these three statement: 1) I’ve been to Brazil, 2) I’ve been to Russia, and 3) I’ve been to South Africa. I don’t care which one was false. This spoiled brat was complaining about how much travel he had to do and he wasn’t even 10.

We had a choice at dinner of taking the set menu for the bargain price of only 45 Euros each, or just ordering a la carte. We chose to just order a hamburger and beer each to save money. I will remember Switzerland to my dying day–I paid 82 Euros for a hamburger and beer which, in US rates is $100. A hundred bucks for a f’ng hamburger and beer. Fortunately, I had my lighter and wallet at hand.

Anyone that follows us much knows that we are not speed hikers or even push ourselves terribly hard on the trail. Our pace can best be described as “somewhat slower than a snail with plenty of rest breaks.” Today will be the 7th in a row without a zero day–not our usual MO (modus operandi for non-English speakers meaning we are doing something different from our norm, i.e. hiking more than 6 days in a row). In order for me to make this possible with the boss-ma’am, this was going to have to be an easy day. Thankfully, Switzerland cooperated.

The trail started out easy enough doing a little bit of walking through towns and along the road. We saw no one. The Swiss were definitely NOT interested in interacting with outsiders. As we came into one little village, a woman must not have checked her monitors before heading outside because she seemed genuinely shocked that she came face to face with us. After her initial shock wore off, she said “au revoir” and scampered back inside. At another point, I was looking in a huge picture window of a house off the side of the trail and I will swear to my dying day that I saw someone take a dive under the table to avoid being seen. As we walked past the house, there was a completely set table outside the back door with food and steaming coffee on the table, yet no signs of movement at all. I even stopped a few minutes to see if they would come out with us standing on the road; they wouldn’t. I waited long enough for the coffee to get cold–I’ll get my revenge in small ways.

The walk was level to slightly downhill all morning with minimal views of Mont Blanc massif. There were some good looking alps in the distance, but no real views of the one we were circumnavigating because we were just too close to its base. Even though we walked through several towns with plenty of evidence that people actually did reside in them, we saw no one other than the woman we startled and the table jumper/hider. Needless to say, we didn’t find anyplace to get a cup of coffee to relax a bit.

Other than the twilight feeling of walking through recently deserted (as in the last 5 minutes) towns, it was a pleasant walk along the glacial wash coming off of the mountain. After about 3 hours, we found an open cafe/bar on the side of the highway. We decided to go ahead and grab a bite for lunch rather than cook something. We sat at a table out front with our feet, literally, on the highway. We were served a nice plate of spaghetti and a Coke (a $10 meal at Denny’s) for the bargain price of 45 Euros.

All morning as we were walking, we saw beautiful chalets which I knew were well out of our price range. Other than the friendliness of the people, they made us feel further welcome by trying to rip us off at every opportunity. We’ve only been in Switzerland about 18 hours at this point and have spent almost 150 Euros for a bed to sleep in and a plate of almost warm spaghetti. They are obviously trying to keep the riff-raff out of their country and it’s is very apparent to me that I am target #1 on their list.

I know my place in modern society–I don’t have one. I never set the rules for the corporate owned society we live in, nor have I agreed to play by those rules. Corporations do not like those who rock the boat. Hence, why we walk. There is not a single person reading this blog that is not more successful than I am. Do not forget for a moment that we are homeless, furnitureless, carless, and comfortless. I have embraced minimalism for two reasons: I don’t like the rules of the game and I am lazy. As we are walking through this country that doesn’t want me there for anything other than the little bit of money that can extract from me, I am getting more and more depressed. Pam doesn’t get bothered by this kind of stuff but she never hesitates to agree with me when I say that I am lazy.

I want out of Switzerland. The sooner the better. This is the nicest place I have ever been that I can’t wait to get away from. I feel ripped off at every turn and completely inadequate as a human being because I am not rich enough to be wanted here. Switzerland has become the image of everything I despise in modern society. It’s clean, beautiful, and they don’t want outsiders (unless you are filthy rich) and then you are welcome until your money runs out.

If you would like the experience of visiting Switzerland, I have a little task you can perform which will give you the same feeling and save the price of a plane ticket. Go to the bank and withdraw $1,000–preferable all ones (we want the experience to last). Go out back at your house and build a bonfire. Once it’s roaring well, start throwing the ones in until they are all burning–this should take about 10 minutes if the fire is right. Welcome to Switzerland.

Want to spend another day, head back to the bank for another $1,000. It’s very important that you remember one thing–we are traveling cheap. If you want nice accommodations and real food, get $3,000 per day for the fire. Let’s say you want to spend a week here going first class. You can send me a check for $10,000 for the money I have saved you with this little demo. You will only be out a total of $31,000 with the money you send me and what you have burned–I have saved you at least $20,000 and you will have the same glowing feeling you get from actually visiting here. It’s what I do, suffer so you don’t have to. If you need an address for the check, email me.

After lunch, we started to climb a bit. It wasn’t too hard of a climb, well less than 2000′ over the course of 3 miles. As soon as we got into the climb, we noticed sculptures carved into tree stumps. We got up to a nice view of the valley and saw a beautiful picnic table and water trough. This was right above a house on the side of the mountain. I saw an old man out back of the house, and I suspect him of being the artist. About the same distance after the house, the sculptures stopped. They were true works of art and love.

We also couldn’t help thinking of our Friday night wine club from days gone by.  Switzerland does have a mascot for nature awareness–Charlotte la Marmotte. She dresses just like one of our members, a chef hat, flower in her hair, and a mushroom in her mouth, the main difference being our Charlotte requires a bottle of wine first while Switzerland’s Charlotte dresses this way sober.

When we got to Champex, we fell in love with a place that we can’t afford and doesn’t want us. It was a small village on the side of an alpine lake with charm oozing out it’s every pore. Who wouldn’t be willing to spend 8 Euros for a 250 ml glass of beer to enjoy this view. Compared to last night, this really was a bargain. We decided to rent a hotel room with our own bathroom and balcony for only 10 Euros more than we spent last night. We splurged for a culinary pizza in the hotel restaurant. I kept my lighter and a wad of tens with me–I wanted this moment to last.

Today started out just where we left off, a great trail with amazing views. Val Veni is probably the most beautiful valley I have ever been in or seen, and remember, I’ve been to Nepal, Washington State, Colorado, and all through the Pyrennes. These last three days are worth the trip in itself. I just can’t imagine a more picturesque place on earth. We have had the glaciers hanging over us, we have heard avalanches and rock falls, and we have had to go slow, not because the trail is hard, but because we can’t stop staring at the massif across from us.

We were the last ones out of the refuge this morning, mainly because I had to cook breakfast and clean up after while Pam just had to pack, so chalk it up to me being slow domestically. Add in the morning rush hour in the valley (a man and his dog driving a herd of cattle along the trail) and we just didn’t care how fast we went. Other than the cattle drive, we didn’t see anyone until we got to Refuge Elena just before the Swiss border.

It was about 5 miles to Refuge Elena so we were ready for lunch when we got there. Since it was closed, they had removed all picnic tables from the area. We decided to make use of the winter room so we could have a table with a view. While we ate our lunch, we watched a group of about a dozen climbers making their way up across the valley from us.

After lunch we had less than a 2000′ climb to Grand Col de Ferret which is the French/Switzerland frontier. We passed an older couple that had been in front of us, but now they were siting on the side of the trail watching the climbers and the glaciers. They were in their early sixties, both retired, and had a vacation home in Chamonix but lived full time in Paris. Now that we have accepted that we are not going to pick up a whole lot of French on this trip, we tend to look at communication as more of a game–international charades, if you will. He spoke no English, we are illiterate in all languages, and she spoke a little bit of English. We managed to all have fun trying to communicate.

As we were nearing the top of the col, we passed one very overloaded donkey and about a dozen underburdened people. They were doing a half way around the mountain trip ending in Courmayeur. We really felt sorry for all the gear the donkey was carrying–you could hear him struggling with the load. I’ll bet there was easily more than 500# on his back. I don’t blame the people that booked the trip, I blame the tour operator for not using 2 animals instead of one.

At the pass, we had great views of the valley behind us and a nice easy trail in front of us, but no magnificent vistas to look forward to. Going into Switzerland, you lose all views of the upper portion of the massif with its glaciers. We did stop and watch a farmer with 4 amazing sheep dogs gather up an entire flock of sheep from the side of the mountain and get them all in a single file line to move them to another grazing field. The dogs were lightening fast and efficient, the shepherd just stood there and let the dogs do all the work–typical of management (it really brought back memories of Brad Butler to me–I guess that will be another “cease and desist” order from his lawyer).

The trail didn’t match the description in the guidebook or a turn was not well marked, but we ended up doing a lot of road walking into the town of Ferret, Switzerland. We knew from our hard earned refuge list that there was nothing open for business in Ferret, but we saw the church at the lower end of town and wanted to get a picture of it. I had just read an article on the internet (it was on the internet so it must be true) that Switzerland is the least welcoming country in the world–don’t forget, the world includes places like North Korea, Afghanistan, and Georgia (the country or the American state–doesn’t matter which for comparison purposes). As we walked through the small town, we didn’t see any people, but the doors of all the houses were open. We got to the church, took a picture, and turned around to walk back to the trail. Every door that had been open was now closed. They didn’t slam them, just waited until we were past and silently closed them so they wouldn’t take a chance of intermingling with the strangers.

We were not off to a good first impression. We continued on to La Fouly where we knew there were places to stay or even camp. The guidebook gave us the name of a cheap place to stay and it was the first place we saw upon entering town, so we went there. It was dead, but open. They didn’t take credit cards, but were willing to accept Euros (Switzerland is not part of the EU). She graciously rounded the price up effectively charging us 10 Euros more than she should have. The place was OK but 80 Euros for a bed without food. Most places in France are between 70-80 Euros for a night in a refuge and that includes dinner and breakfast. We think France is high priced, this was ridiculous and a total ripoff. We had already taken off our boots and were too tired to argue.

Supper was on us. We have been carrying food for 6 days now and it was time to start lightening my load. We had Mexican couscous, snickers, and hot tea. As we were just about finished, two other Americans showed up. They were college students from Gonzaga and were spending a semester in Grenada, Spain to learn Spanish. Luke and Maddie seemed like good kids, but they were hiking in sandals.

After talking with them for a bit, we headed up to get ready for bed while they attempted to watch TV and cook supper. I was a little envious of them having the nerves to study abroad for a semester. I was always trying to study a broad while in school but could never find one willing to cooperate.

 

If we only choose one word for today, it’s a no-brainer for us–“perfect.” The weather was perfect. The trail was perfect. The views were perfect. The company was perfect. The food was perfect. The accommodations were perfect. And, obviously, the beer was perfect.

Since we were staying in a B&B in Courmayeur last night, we decided to take full advantage of the accommodations and sleep in. Having our own bathroom was such a luxury and much easier on me in the middle of the night than walking down a flight of stairs and across a refuge. We even had a bidet. Granted, I wasn’t real familiar with how to use one even though we have had them in several places the last 6 months (at least that’s the excuse I’m using to explain why I sat on it for three hours last night–we may have to include one in our own library when I build us a house in the future. If Pam can’t find me, she’ll at least have a starting point for the search).

It was a B&B, so we headed down for our second B about 9. As soon as we got in the dining room, we saw David and Michelle. I talked to them a few minutes while Pam started grazing. I was afraid to ask to join them since they had already changed their hiking plans to get away from us. They are taking a zero day, today. By the time I got my food, they had invited Pam to join them and, since we are married, they got a bonus unwanted guest. We sat and talked with them until about 10:15 (calm down, Pete, accept that we are getting later starts on average this trail).

Michelle had finished reading a book that she has been carrying on her honeymoon (David, she’s read an entire novel–step up the pace) so she offered to let Pam have it. It seems like a nice gesture, but in the backpacking world, this is known as “weight shedding.” In the Himstedt world, it means Pam carries the book and an equal weight of food to lighten my load. If she can carry luxuries, she’s been slacking.

After we got packed up (and I had one more trial run on the bidet), we hit the trail. Unfortunately, the trail runs through town and there are lots of cafes in town. Even though they had an expresso machine at the B&B. which we took full advantage of (hence the extra bidet practice), there is always room and time for another cafe, especially if the day is starting off with an 800m (2600′) climb.

As we got out of town and on the trail, the Italians must have installed some new sort of trail sensing device which analyzes the hiker and determines the expected time to complete the next section of trail. I walked up to the first marker and it said 1 hour and 30 minutes. I walked 15 feet to the next one, heard a click, and it read 1 hour and 45 minutes. Pam was just a bit behind me when she passed the first marker that said 1 hour and 30 minutes. When she walked past the second marker, it sounded like a drum corps. I never did look to see what her expected time was, but “not good” was my guess.

Something strange happened when we started hiking–I felt great. I didn’t have any pain. I had lots of energy. I was moving quickly. There was a bounce in my step. It looks like six shots of expresso is MY magic number.  I would walk 5 minutes then wait 10 minutes for Pam to catch up. When her breathing would slow and I was not able to hear her heart beating from 10′ away, I’d take off and hike another 5 minutes. We made it to the top of the climb in just a little over the recommended time.

At the top, other than amazing views of Courmayeur and Mont Bianca, there was an open refuge with a bar. We went in for an expresso but decided to have some lunch instead. Pasta with fresh Parmesan and a dessert to follow. Pam made me skip the expresso. I still had oodles of energy, so I didn’t mind. According to the book, we only had two and a half hours to go for the remainder of the day.

Two fully stuffed hikers don’t go quite as fast as 20 year olds on steroids, but we still maintained a pretty good pace. The trail was amazing. We were hiking up on a ridge at 6500′ (give or take) and we stayed at this level the rest of the way to the refuge. The only reason we didn’t make the trail times indicated is because we kept stopping to admire the views of Mont Blanc. At any given time, we could see between 6 and 11 glaciers across from us (the trail follows the ridge opposite Mont Balance because of all the glacial washes and steep cliffs which make building and maintaining a trail near impossible).

As we were ridge walking, we would occasionally stop to try to find the source of the rumbling sound across the valley. We have heard at least a half dozen avalanches in the last two days on Mont Blanc. Because of the cloud cover, we haven’t been able to actually see one yet. Hearing all the avalanches and our experience with rock slides around glaciers on Mt Rainier, we appreciate that the trail is not actually on the Mont Blanc side of the valley.

About two miles before we were going to stop for the day, we ran into a group of mountain bikers. My first thought was “French”. Only the French would be fool hardy enough to mountain bike the TMB (we have seen lots of bike tread trails along the way, but this is the first bikers we have actually seen). The lead biker was, in fact, French, but the next 4 were Americans from Colorado. It was nice to see Americans keeping pace with French on craziness and pace. I’m very glad that we aren’t the standard that Europeans measure Americans by.

The refuges in Italy are absolutely beautiful. The French refuges are nice, but the Italian ones beyond belief. The settings are spectacular and the refuges, themselves, are much nicer than anything we stayed at on the Camino or GR10–ceramic tile throughout, huge picture windows, spacious, well appointed, expresso machines, everything modern and new. When we were at lunch, the place mat showed all the refuges in the area and there must be well over 50 in the area. I thought the French infrastructure was nice, but the Italians have them beat.

Refuge Bonatti is the nicest one we have stayed in to date. As I am typing this entry, I’m also looking out of 1 of 8 picture windows in the dining room at Mont Blanc hoping to catch a break in the clouds (unfortunately, MB hides in the clouds quite a bit). We have (meaning I have) been carrying 3-6 days worth of food along this trail and we haven’t really eaten any of it. We hadn’t planned on not getting any meals at this refuge to try and lighten my load, but with the huge lunch we had at the last refuge and the few beers I’ve had here, my load might not lighten much. I just hope we eat the food and use the fuel before we complete this trail.

I’ve also got to say that this is the best time of year to hike the TMB. Tonight is the 3rd night we have stayed in a refuge so far on the trail and we have had a dorm room to ourselves each time. I don’t understand why Europeans are not out hiking now. The weather during the days is perfect and the trail is almost deserted. I guess I should thank them for not realizing what they are missing. Even if it snows, we’ve got plenty of time–our return tickets to the USA aren’t until December 8.

I was in charge of the alarm clock today so we had a two snooze maximum which means I shut the alarm off after two snoozes and counted on waking myself up in another 10 minutes, or so. It worked like a charm. We made it down to breakfast by 7:30 as planned. We shared breakfast with our Israeli friends and he said to not take the road into Courmayeur (which agreed with the guidebook’s assessment). They are veering off of the TMB to do another loop through Switzerland and will return to finish the TMB in about a week.

Pam looked at the weather forecast last night and got herself in a frenzy because it called for rain and ice over night. When I was looking out the dining room window, I saw no evidence of either. All I saw was fog filling the valley. Fog. It was like an LSD flashback to the GR10 (not that I’ve ever tried the drug or even know anyone who has. I am merely referring to a large number of cultural references in which a bad trip gets revisited in times of stress. As always, I am and always have been an angel in regards to illicit drug matters–we’ll leave the subject of alcohol out of this discussion).

Thanks to my outstanding clock management abilities, we managed to get our earliest start of this trail: an astounding start time of 8:44–and we weren’t the last ones out of the refuge. I know at least two pair of boots were still in the shoe room when we walked out.

Heading downhill from the refuge, we passed the Italian gentleman who we had heard rode his motorcycle all the way up from Sicily to Courmayeur and then hiked the TMB. If this was the case, this should be his last day on the trail. We weren’t certain if this was the man, but we were certain that this man wasn’t French because we passed him and he didn’t start running to pass us back up–he seemed cool with someone passing him; definitely not French.

We made great time heading down the valley because it was fairly level walking and we’ve pretty much nailed the easy walking concept, it’s those pesky climbs and descents that get us. You’d think that after nearly 1400 miles, we’d have developed a little cardio capacity or leg strength. We are a modern sports medicine mystery.

We had less than 2000′ of climbing from the valley floor to the ridge we had to cross into the Courmayeur ski area. As we were nearing the midpoint, the guy we had passed caught up to us again (maybe he has French relations somewhere in his family tree?). We couldn’t speak Italian (having barely learned 3 phrases in French in 6 months–I still can’t ask for pepper without having French people starting to bleed out of their ears) and he didn’t speak much English. We smiled a lot and said beautiful because Mont Bianca (that’s Italian for Mont Blanc which is French for White mountain–could I be sneaking a 4th language into my language butchering repertoire?) was starting to reveal portions of her glistening self through the fog much like a fan dancer–a little here, cover that up and show a little there.

Trying to be nice, we offered to let him hike in front of us. He demurred. We’re 99.99% certain he’s not French. We kept walking together and he would catch up with us every time we were breathing into our brown paper bags to stop hyperventilating. We took pictures of each other and Mount Bianca. I finally decided to go for it and find out if this was the motorcycle riding man from Sicily. Through sign language (and Harley Davidson sound affects) we did determine that this was our man. We, more or less, walked the rest of the way into Courmayeur together, never more than 5 minutes apart on the trail and always smiling.

When we stopped for lunch, he caught up with us again except we now noticed that he must have fallen because his pant leg was up and a bandage was on his knee. We offered any assistance we could (first aid kit and vitamin I) but he had it dressed up nicely. For the first time, he allowed himself to pass us because we were taking a long, peanut butter induced haze of a lunch.

We caught up with each other again in the ski area. We sat down at a picnic table and relaxed before the final big descent into town. Honestly, we all had been mesmerized by the massiveness of Mont Blanc. Seeing the glacial washes of past lahars was beyond belief. It’s just unimaginable to see the size of these flood paths. We were standing a few thousand feet above the paths of the floods and could see massive boulders that had washed down the side of the mountain. In between clouds, we could catch sight of the glaciers near the summit of the mountain. Mont Blanc is over 1000′ taller than Mount Rainier and the Massif that we are walking around dwarfs Rainier.

After the ski area, we hit the first portion of trail in nearly two and a half days that we didn’t like. It was steep, dusty, and had lots of loose scree. Our Italian friend was a few minutes in front of us, but we didn’t catch up until we made it into Dolonne just before Courmayeur. He was waiting for us. We finally all introduced ourselves to each other. Sebastiano had completed his trip around Mont Blanc. He waited to make sure we made it safely in to Courmayeur before he jumped on his motorcycle and headed to Genoa this evening.

Sebastiano walked us to the Tourist Information office where we all said good bye. He gave us a business card with his email address on it. Now it made sense why his bandage was so nicely done; he is a physiotherapist and is a doctor in a sports medicine group. Once again, we wish we could speak the language and communicate, but we are continually amazed by the kindness and concern of the people we meet along the way.

We found a bed and breakfast right in the heart of town. I knew if I sat down, I would fall asleep so we headed out to look around a bit. As we were coming out of a little grocery store, we ran into David. He and Michelle are staying the same B&B that we are (there’s over 60 places to stay in town). Just as they think they are ditching us, we show up again.

Courmayeur is one of the most beautiful places we have been. Mont Blanc hovers above the town in the distance with her glaciers draped over her shoulders. This is a high end ski area and the starting point of the Mont Blanc trail run (which we just missed by a few weeks). The runners do in about 24 hours what we are taking 11 days to do–make it around Mont Blanc. In all fairness, though, they aren’t carrying packs and food so it’s hardly comparable.

We are in Italy, and we walked here! Italy will be the only country in Europe that we walk IN and OUT of. Spain we walked into, but took a trail out of. France, we keep coming in and out of so much that we’ve got every mode covered; plane, train, bus, and walking. What if you walked to Italy? What would you have for supper? Pizza, of course.

The wind howled a good portion of the night, so we were very thankful for the refuge still being open. We got up and had breakfast at 7:30–could Pam be serious about early starts on this trip? We were on the trail by a little after 8.

When we walked out of the refuge, the first thing we noticed (other than our noses sticking together with each exhalation) was that the mud was no longer mud. It was frozen solid. There was ice in what used to be puddles. It was “crinkly” under foot, but stable. We only had about 700′ to climb to get to Col des Fours at a little over 8700′. We thought we were making good time until we turned around.

David and Michelle were still cooking their breakfast when we left, so we figured that we would get a good jump on them. We had to have at least a 20 minute head start, but here they were right on our heels at the pass. We all arrived about the same time. It was a clear, crisp morning with outstanding views in all directions. There was still snow on the trail from the “freak” snowfall of last week. They decided to drop their packs and take a side trip up to the peak of Tete Nord des Fours with an altitude of just over 9000′–on a clear day (like today), you are supposed to be able to see the Matterhorn. The book says it’s only a 40 minute round trip, but Pam and I didn’t have the extra 2 hours to spare.

They headed up and we headed down. We kept looking back to check their progress. We couldn’t believe it, they were already on the summit and we were barely down the trail. When they caught up with us again, they had seen us when they dot to the top and said they couldn’t believe it, they were already at the summit and we had barely moved–geezers!

Just like all French trails, no height is achieved without the payback. In this case a 4500′ climb down to accentuate our next 4000′ climb up for the day. It started out on loose scree and snow but once we dropped the first 1000′, it became an enjoyable walk. They nearly caught up with us in about an hour (after their 40 minute side trip), but they were so embarrassed for our slow pace that they decided to take a break to not completely humiliate us.

At the bottom of the decent there was a fromagerie next to the parking lot. Last night, at the refuge, they had served some local sheep cheese that Pam really liked and here we were at the source. I made her go get it while I sat and let my ankles recover a bit. While she was inside, David and Michelle showed up and got some as well. We all congregated around the bathrooms in the parking lot (surprisingly, this is not as disgusting or as weird as it sounds–the pursuit of porcelain is a universal endeavor among backpackers).

They decided to have a lunch break in the parking lot while Pam and I decided to head up to the next refuge (about a mile away) in the hopes of finding a seat out of the sun and wind. We were all heading into Italy tonight towards Rifugio Elisabetta. We did find some nice places to sit at the refuge and they passed us once again just as we were finishing up.

Generally, the guidebook for the TMB is pretty well written and gives us information on attractions off the trail and some history of the area, but this time I couldn’t believe what I was reading: “On this stage the TMB crosses out of France and enters Italy at the Col de la Seigne, one of the easiest crossings of the circuit.” Whiskey Tango Foxtrot–I’ve got to climb over 4000′ for one of the easiest crossings, we might have some issues on this trail.

Actually, the book was right. The French had done something extraordinary on this section, actually, it was local farmers who had fields higher up and needed a road for their equipment. Whoever did it, we much appreciated the correct installation of switchbacks almost all the way to the top of the pass. It took us longer than the book suggested, but not by much. When we got to the top it was cold and windy once again, but for the second time in a single day, we had hiked higher than we did on the entire GR10. Not only that, we were in Italy, and we walked here!

The path down was not as easy to follow as one might hope. It was actually an undefined series of tracks all leading down–just pick one and keep going. In a few minutes we came to a small building that the Italian government has set up as an information center and museum on the preserve around Mont Bianca. We were hoping for some coffee, but it was closed. We can’t catch a break.

The walk into the refuge was along an old military road that Mussolini built up to near the border with France. I don’t know if this road actually saw any action during the war, but I do know from past experiences of walking along old military roads that they tend to be utilitarian in design and not for comfort of the walker. It killed my already tired ankles. Even though it was less than 3 miles from the pass, it felt like forever to get there.

When we walked into the refuge, we were amazed by it’s size and how nice it was. This was the largest and nicest refuge we had ever been in. When we walked into the dining room, there was couple discussing gravity vs the concept of gravity–I always like a nice philosophical discussion, but I’ve learned to never enter an argument unarmed and these two were way better armed than I was so I just got a beer instead.

They ended up joining us for dinner, part of the segregation of English speakers and Italian speakers. They were a very nice couple from Israel. They knew the three guys we had had dinner with last night. He has hiked both the AT and PCT as well as the Annapurna Loop in Nepal so we had lots to talk about. When we told them our plans, he offered up another suggestion of a trail for us–the Israel National Trail which runs north to south from the Lebanese border to the Red Sea. It’s best to do this in winter so it fits in well with our future plans. With our slow hiking pace this year, we are beginning to have doubts to if we are able to pull of 3 major trails back to back (AT, Te Araroa, and PCT) so this might be a good substitute for the Te Araroa until we have a bigger window of time. In any case, it has definitely made our list of trails to complete because the Bedouins will actually take you in and let you sleep in their tents.

She speaks four languages (English, French, Spanish, and Hebrew) and I’m sure he speaks as many or more. He’s a philosopher so it was good for me that, at least one time in my life, I kept my mouth shut at the right time during their gravity discussion.

We got lucky again and got a small dorm room that normally sleeps 6 all to ourselves. The only drawback is that the upstairs bathrooms have been winterized so my nightly temperature checks will involve a bit more walking than usual. David and Michelle never did show up at the refuge, so we figured they went on ahead to get away from us–my magnetic personality never ceases to scare.

Our new silk sleeping bag liners did help to keep us warmer last night, but they tend to get twisted around every time I roll over. It also made it difficult to get up and check weather conditions outside the tent the 2 or 3 times I like to do that every night. While I’m up, I usually pee as well.

Pam has decided “we” are going to get earlier starts on this trail. By “we”, she means “Curtis” had to start getting up earlier to make coffee and boil water for the muesli before she will stick her head outside of the liner. I let her have two bowls of muesli to my one (apparently, she doesn’t want her pants back too badly). I was packed and ready to go (except for the tent which was still occupied) before she emerged. In fairness, Pam does deflate the sleeping pad and pack everything up before she comes out–I just don’t understand why it’s necessary to deflate my side of the pad at 6a while her’s stays inflated until 8; part of the mystery of living with a woman).

The trail started out easy enough today; walking along a glacial river coming down the side of the massif. We managed to get some of our best wildlife pictures of the entire trip during this walk (not that we saw any wildlife, but we got some good pics). We tried, and failed, to find an open cafe to get a good cup of coffee, but nothing, I mean nothing, was open. We didn’t see a large number of people out either. The few we did see were day hikers and even they weren’t too enthusiastic. One solo hiker passed us up when we got to the Notre Dame gorge and I could see him waffling inside. He’d take 20 steps, stop and shake his head. He did this about 3 or 4 times (it was quite steep here). I knew what was coming. He turned around and went back down to the parking lot–he obviously was not a French hiker.

Today’s section of trail was all uphill after the first 2 miles of fairly level hiking next to the river. It wasn’t too bad, just under 4000′ and we knew this would be our worst day on the circuit. In GR10 terms, this was just an average day so we had this. We thought we were on a wide section of trail until cars started passing us. It was easily a 35 degree incline and cars were passing us! This really irritated me, but as we got higher, we ran across a number of refuges (none of which were open), but apparently the lazier type of hiker drives up a couple thousand feet before getting out and hiking with their “heavy” day packs.

In the middle of the Notre Dame gorge is an amazing little waterfall of a few hundred feet in height. The river has managed to cut an arch through the rock wall over the millennia. It’s very easy to see that if you fall in this torrent, you are dead. I tried not to get too close to the edge because Pam wasn’t in the best of moods since I didn’t have any milk for her coffee.

The road finally petered out after we passed the last refuge at 5500′ where we stopped for lunch–the lunch we carried because? Yes, the refuge was closed. Now, it finally felt like we were on a real trail. Tremendous views and no cars. In retrospect, I wish we had done the high route yesterday to get away from some of the road walking. The way we did this, staying on the main route because the guy at the Office of the High Mountain was trying to scare us, was really kind of boring until now.

Even though we are carrying a map and guidebook, it doesn’t mean we are actually paying close attention to them. When we got to the first pass of the day (we only thought we had one to go over) we stopped in the warming hut to get out of the wind for a few minutes. We considered staying there, but the smell of urine was a bit too strong for my liking. At 7400′, it was quite blustery.

Imagine our surprise when we kept climbing leaving the hut instead of descending. This is when we decided that just carrying the map and book was not enough, we were going to have to start looking at them on a near daily basis. We got out the guidebook and discovered our next pass was at a little over 8100′ or almost as high as we went on the GR10 at its highest point. There’s no concern about altitude at this level, it was just a tad cool for us. I know from experience that I don’t start having problems until around 16,500 feet.

Since we hadn’t paid attention and prepared ourselves mentally for the effort to climb the second pass, we were done for the day. Just a half mile after the pass was a refuge that was still open, so we decided to cut the day short and get out of the cold for the night. We were the first people to show up and get a dorm room. Hopefully, they won’t put anyone else in with us since there should be so few people out this late in the season.

We dropped our packs and laid on our beds to relax a bit. We did hear other people come in, but hey didn’t stick them in our room. When we decided to go down and have a beer, we ran into David and Michelle, the Canadian newlyweds. We sat and talked with them until our dinner was ready. They talked us into doing the high route for the rest of this section which would take us over a pass higher than anything we did on the GR10 and wouldn’t really cost us any extra climbing since we were already at 8000′ for the night.

There were only 11 people total in the refuge tonight: the four newlyweds (which we are still going by), a French couple out for a weekend adventure, three young Israelis, and another pair of hikers that kept to themselves. There was also 5 staff members of the refuge who were getting everything ready to shut the place down in a couple of days. After 6 months, I still can’t pronounce my French well enough to even ask for “salt and pepper” without causing confusion. David speaks both French and English having grown up in a bilingual household, so he helped me out.

Poivre. I can spell it and recognize it when I hear it. I love it. You can’t get too much of it in your diet. But I don’t think I’ll ever be able to pronounce it correctly. I am an old dog and this is, apparently, too new of a trick for me.

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.