Category: 2017 Tour du Mont Blanc

The order of the day is “get organized” by the boss mamm. I’ve got to admit that I have a few questions about the trail since every French person we have met the last few weeks on the GR10 was telling us it was probably too late to do the TMB. We heard about the snow high on the mountain a few weeks ago and were, naturally, concerned. We also heard that it snowed in the Sahara desert at the same time; the first time in 40 years, so we are hoping the snow is a fluke.

Once we got packed up and headed out at the incredibly early time of 9:15, we headed straight to the tourist information office. After waiting in line for 15 minutes, they told us they couldn’t help us, but we should check out the “Office of the High Mountain” which became our next stop.

The guy at the “Office of the High Mountain” was less than enthusiastic about our chances for completing the trail. In fact, he was very discouraging overall, but admitted we could complete the trail, but with difficulty. What difficulty he wouldn’t say. He told us lots of refuges were closing for the season so we might have trouble finding places to sleep. We told him we had a tent. He went into a lecture that we were not, under any circumstances, allowed to camp in Italy or Switzerland. When I went to the board to take pictures of the refuge list, he reluctantly gave us a copy of the list. I asked about food and he told us the most we would have to carry was three days worth, but not where we would need to do that.

After the encouragement we received at this office, I was really thinking we should just skip it. We went to a book store and bought a map of the trail thinking this might be helpful (it’s always a good idea to be open to new ideas and carrying an actual map would be something new for us). Another new thing we did was to trace out the trail on the map. This gave us an idea of where we were headed and actually raised a few questions because we had some contradictions between the book and map. We decided to give the Office of the High Mountain another try.

When we went back in, he was clearly miffed to see the likes of us again. I spread out my map to ask my question and he curtly said “just stay on the main trail all the way around the mountain.” I asked which was the main route because our book disagreed with the map. I pointed out the section and he said it would be ok to take the other route indicated, but don’t take any of the high routes. I’m sometimes dense and didn’t take the hint; I had the audacity to continue asking questions. It was at this point that he reluctantly mentioned that a section of the route he had just told us to take was closed. I tried to soldier on with my questions, but someone else came into the office that spoke French so the English cloaking device got engaged. This was the closest to a bad experience we have had so far. Overall, we got the information we needed.

We went back out and found a MacDonalds to sit and talk about our chances (give us a break, this is the first MCDs we’ve been in the entire trip and we didn’t order any food). We decided we could do this even though everyone was trying to scare us away. The bottom line is that they want us to stay at refuges and buy the meal plans which would easily cost us over $1200 to do the trail and that isn’t an option for us. We understand that they want to hold us food hostage again but “Homey don’t play that” anymore.

To take away their leverage over us, we headed to find an outfitter and a grocery store. We bought new insoles for our boots (“Smart Feet” do exist in France even if Justin and Patrice won’t take a side trip in their van), some fuel for the JetBoil, and a few backpacker meals so we had an emergency food supply. At the grocery store, we got enough food to last anywhere from 3-6 days depending on how much Pam will allow me to eat (I think she wants her pants back).

Having done all this information hunting and shopping, it was now either time to hit the trail OR find a restaurant and accept that we weren’t starting until tomorrow morning. Pam was easily swayed to option 2 when I said “do you want to get a burger from where we ate last night?”

After lunch, all we had to do was make it to Les Houches by bus and find a place to stay for the night. There was a gite right next to the tourist information office, but when we went up to it, the woman said they had closed for the season as of today. She referred us to a place just up the hill. Not an actual distance, just “up the hill on the right.” We headed for it and passed a couple of women. After about 10 minutes, we turned around to head back to the tourist office and passed the women again. After we talked to the person in the office who told us it was further than we went and on the left, we passed the women once again.

The third pass is the conversation charm. We all said “Hi” and realized we were all Americans. In fact, the two women were having a vacation to celebrate their 65th birthdays and they were both from Belleville, IL (less than 2 hours from where I grew up in Decatur).

The hotel was running a low season special price so we stayed reasonably cheap and got breakfast included. On the way into Les Houches, I had seen an Indian Restaurant and was really wanting a little variety. We walked back that way and had the most unFrench meal we have had in several months. We considered getting a Eurail Pass for when we finish the TMB, but we couldn’t find anyone willing to accept the mail for us while we were on the trail so we will have to figure something out when we get done.

It’s all fun and games until you wake up to a vigilante force surrounding your hotel with pitchforks and torches. All the time we were walking through Barcelona and noticing the large police presence, we assumed it was in response to the recent terrorist attacks. That all changed when David Hasselhoff entered our hostel and started spitting on us–we knew this was “go time” for us.

In the end, the French security forces made a tactical blunder which allowed us our freedom–they started speaking in Spanish while in Barcelona. Everyone knows, Catalonia is the primary language. Catalonians actually prefer to speak English over Spanish. We had made good use of our time while in the city by dropping in all the local Catalonian hot spots and drinking the locally brewed beers while talking about independence for Catalonia. Once the Spanish started, the people of Barcelona rose to our defense.

We had to agree to a few simple conditions for the French Federation of Professional Hikers to agree to give us our freedom:
1) Do not criticize the use of time for trail distances no matter how fricking stupid this may seem to intelligent people throughout the world. It’s the assininely accepted norm in the mountains (even though the people of Catalonia agree with us and have started changing the signage from times to distances). We’ve agreed to quit making fun of this incredibly nonsensical way to measure distance.
2) We also must acknowledge that the French DO NOT use highly trained racing snails to determine the asinine trail times we have agreed to not criticize. Apparently, the snails are not highly trained and are more slug-like in appearance (the large quantity of black slugs we have noticed are actually the trail calibrators).
3) Make the following statement before the world press: “We wholly support the French Federation of Professional Hikers in their attempt to get hiking included in the summer Olympics. We recognize only the most physically fit should attempt to engage in such a demanding sport and that it is serious business (where enjoyment should be kept to a minimum) while perusing continual improvement by the athletes.”
4) We must also endorse the European ban of pack elephants on all trails in continental Europe (who knew they were actually allowed in Great Britain?).
5) Quit pulling Pam’s hiking pants up (which are actually too big for me). It seems that when I pull the pants all the way up, I am, kinda, showing my junk. Restaurant revenues are apparently lower wherever we eat. I agreed, but I don’t think plumber’s ass is going to be much of an improvement for revenue.

As long as we accept the above terms, we will once again be allowed to backpack in France provided we hike all trails above 1000m in elevation with a blindfold. However, I am from Illinois where I learned about loopholes in the law: at no time did they actually state we had to wear the blindfolds over our eyes just like the Illinois motorcycle laws do not state that cyclists must wear protective eye wear over their eyes (which explains the large number of motor cyclists with safety glasses on their knees).

All of this can be summed up in the following phrase–“Mont Blanc, here we come!)

We had a very enjoyable hiatus in Barcelona where we took a double-decker bus tour of the entire city, walked through the gothic district of town (which is over 2400 years old), partook of lots of locally brewed beers, visited the Gaudi cathederal which should be completed in 2026, and ate enough to put back on all the weight we lost hiking the GR10 (yet Pam’s pants are still too big for me–go figure).

In one local bar, we got yelled at for being “f%$ing tourists”–this from a man who is planning to go hike the Himalayas in a month. He couldn’t understand why we were laughing at him when we pointed out that he was going to “tour the Himalayas.” In the end, we all agreed (over the magical power of beer) that none of us are tourists, but we are adventurers. To be on the safe side, though, we went on a beer adventure to another bar.

With great reluctance, we checked out of “Yeah Hostel” this morning. I say great reluctance, not because we weren’t ready to leave Barcelona, but because we didn’t want to go through the ordeal of travel through the subway to the airport to a shuttle all in countries where we don’t speak any of the language. Barcelona is preparing for an “unofficial” public referendum on October 1 where the issue is independence from Spain for Catalonia. I am afraid that there might be some violence because this has become a very emotional issue for the people. I hope peace reigns during the election.

Chamonix will be having a welcoming ceremony for us later this evening (part of our GR10 “victory tour”). We will resupply and head out in the morning. The weather forecast looks good for the next 10 days so we are going to give the “Tour du Mont Blanc” (TMB) a go. The itinerary for the TMB is 11 days, so we are going to try to do it in less than 30 days. We have already contracted a “slug” guide to show us the way–I hope we can keep up.