During the night we knew the cloud cover broke because we could look out and see stars. The moon was so bright it woke us up. We both got up to pee and saw the lights of the village of Larrau below us. It was a beautiful sight. Other than that, our night can best be described by the Paul Simon song “slip sliding away.”
The spot we imagined to be level in the fog turned out to be about a 30 degree slant. I gallantly let Pam have the mat all to herself. That and she has a mean elbow in the middle of the night if she doesn’t get her way. We tried putting all of our gear below Pam to stop the mat from sliding, but it just kept rising in the air and rolling out from underneath her. Whenever possible, I tried to get my hips on the pad, but if I moved too much or took up too much space, the elbows started flying. I’m a saint (and silent about it).
We got up before 8 and stepped out to see the beautiful valley we were in. The water supply that felt so far away in the fog was only about 75′. It’s amazing how low visibility makes distances grow. With all the chores to do we didn’t get on the trail until 9:45 but that represents an hour and 45 minute improvement.
As we started moving, a group of French hikers came running down the trail. We let the first guy pass and kept eyes over our shoulders to see when the rest were going to overtake us. One of the women was so fast, she didn’t even give us a chance to move out of the trail but just ran in the ferns further down the side of the mountain to get around us.
A word about French hikers–they are very competitive and in great shape. The competition shows through whenever you talk to them. The first French man we met on the trail said he was going to do the trail in 42 days. We told that to the second French man and he said he was going to do half the trail in 18 days. The next two groups told us they were going to do the entire trail in 21 days. I’ll bet each of them makes their goal or beats it. They literally run up and down the trail with full packs. They carry competitiveness to a new level. The average French person is in far better shape than the average American.
The trail was generally downhill meaning we only gained 1400′ of elevation while losing 3500′. We could see clouds on the other side of passes trying to get into our valley, but the mountains surrounding the valley were tall enough to keep them out so we had a pleasant sunshiney walk. The worst part of today was walking through the muddiest section of trail we have hit to date. We had about a mile of terrible trail. I fanned the air and almost fell three times, but I managed to stay vertical.
We took a couple of breaks after climbs. We still can’t run up the hills (nor will we ever be able to), but we are getting stronger. Pam didn’t even complain about her pains today for the first 4 hours of walking which is new personal best.
We got into Logibar around 3. We had passed some people on the trail and then they passed us–the fact that we even passed them indicated to us that they were not French. When we got to the Auberge Logibar (which is all the town consists of) we ran into the trio again. It turns out Nils, Alici, and Jocelyn are all from Denmark and are hiking the GR10 for 2 weeks–since they aren’t French, they will not be doing the entire trail. Nils and Alici have also hiked the GR20 and Tour de Mont Blanc. We told them our plans. When we took their picture, we made it possible for Nils to cross of an item on his bucket list–appear in a blog. We had a great time talking with them and will probably run into them again tomorrow.
Even thought the cloud cover eventually got our valley, it didn’t look threatening so we decided to get a jump on tomorrows hike. The itinerary for tomorrow calls for 14.5 miles with 4000′ of elevation gain. If we can knock out 2000′ of gain tonight, we just might be able to make it to a location where we can get showers and electricity to charge all of our devices.
The walk out of Logibar was simply amazing. The trail followed a thundering mountain stream up a narrow gorge. We kept climbing faster than the river was rising in the gorge. By the time we got to a narrow point in the gorge, we were a good 700′ above the gorge. Not to be deterred, the French have built a suspension bridge across the gorge. Pam was a little concerned about crossing it but she ran right across–she didn’t want to spend any more time on it than she had to.
Once across, we still had several hundred feet to climb. By the time we got near the top, the trail started to level out and it was already 7. We were hoping to quickly find a level campsite next to water but that wasn’t to be for a while. We walked another mile and a half before we finally found a spot that met our needs. It was getting close to 8 by the time we set up camp and headed down to the river to completely wash our clothes and bodies. There were no living creatures left in the water by the time we were done.
As we were bringing everything back up to our tent, Axel and Heike walked down the trail. It was almost 9 and they had been hiking since 8:30 this morning. We really thought they would pass us up earlier in the day. At least for tonight, we have neighbors.
