The last day of our trip promised to be the longest and hardest yet. Each morning I’d wake up with stiff calves but after 5 minutes of hiking, my legs relaxed and felt fresh and new again.
Morning mountains.
In the sun, it was warm but in the shade, it was awfully cold!
We hiked and hiked, climbing higher into the sun which warmed us considerably. We hit a bit of snow.
We hit some more snow.
Everything was covered in snow! Getting out the map, Guillaume pointed us in the right direction and handed over his trekking poles to me one more time. The problem with hiking in snow in running shoes wasn’t just that my feet would inevitably get wet, but that they had poor traction. The good news was that this wasn’t a particularly steep section so all I had to do was plug away to reach the summit of Grand Col de Ferret.
Made it!
We stopped for a quick snack and some photos. After trekking through the snow for upwards of half an hour, we were nice and warm and there was surprisingly little wind up there.
The Swiss-Italian border!
From here, we had a steep descent down to the valley.
A hiking shelter.
As you’d expect, it was absolutely lovely.
Our glutes got a rare break as we followed a relatively flat trail for awhile.
We had another good, hard, steep climb to get to our lunch spot. There was no shade and no breeze so it was slow going for me. A man asked me for directions along the way and, in an exhaustion induced brutal mangling of French and Spanish, I pointed him ahead to ask Guillaume who had the map. The two of them chatted happily away for the rest of the climb–the man was a former patient of Guillaume, a physiotherapist! Small world.
We had a good lunch, eating as much as we could so we wouldn’t have to carry anything extra, and got moving. The signs said it was 3 hours 50 minutes to the town of Courmayeur and we planned to be there to catch the last bus of the day back to Chamonix, France, which would depart in precisely 4 hours. Not a moment to spare!
Fortunately the hike was mostly flat with one final steep descent into town.
We must have been really gunning it because we arrived at the bus station just two and a half hours later. But all was not well–the bus was was sold out! So we did what we’d done in New Zealand: stuck our thumbs out and hitched a ride through the Mont Blanc tunnel, an impressive piece of modern engineering.
The full Tour du Mont Blanc would have added another 3 or so days to our hike. We didn’t have enough time to do the whole circuit, but I’m pretty pleased with what we’ve done!
Hike details
Start elevation: 1,600 meters at La Fouly, Switzerland
Finish elevation: 1,224 meters at Courmayeur, Italy
Highest point: 2,537 meters at Grand Col de Ferret
Lowest point: 1,224 meters at Courmayeur, Italy
Hike time: approximately 8 hours
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