Tour du Mont Blanc - Part 2

If you haven't read Part 1 yet, I suggest you start here.

Alex and I had just left Italy for our bus trip to La Fouley, Switzerland the long way around.  Kat and Carly had started their climb over Grand Col Ferret and, unfortunately, Kat wasn't doing too well in her Norovirus aftermath.  We were separated when we desperately all wanted to be together.

When we came out of the tunnel into Chamonix, I made a quick decision, we booked a very pricy Uber to cut our planned public transit journey of around 4-hours to a quick hour and a half drive.  The driver was indeed quick, a middle-eastern man, who had never been to Switzerland, picked us up. He seemed as happy to be driving us into the mountains as we were to be getting the ride.  By the time we made it to La Fouley I had a plan set.  We dropped Alex at the campground to setup and rest and I convinced the driver to take me three more miles up the valley for €10 to join the TMB at a higher point and get to Kat and Carly quicker.  He dropped me off and as I took off up the trail I heard him start flying his drone around the valley.
 
I had 4 miles up 3,500’ to reach the top of Grand Col Ferett at just over 8,000 feet.  Kat and Carly were set 2 miles below the pass at a refugio trying to rest up before pushing further.  I told them to meet me at the Col and I could take Kat’s bag and some of the weight out of Carly’s.  After I hung up the phone, I started huffing up the mountain with nothing but a rain jacket, a liter and a half of water and a pack of gummy bears, set on my mission to link back up and end the day together.
 
The higher I got, the more I crossed with UTMB runners.  They kicked up dust flying down the mountain passed me as I climbed in the opposite direction.  The valley going up was beautiful, a deep green canyon that made you forget there was a good size town at the bottom of it.  I neared the top and still didn’t see my friends, I was worried they hadn’t started hiking and I’d have to go down the two miles on the other side to get them.  As I made it to the top of the col I felt exhausted, my body was running a huge calorie deficit after losing my stomach the day before and not being able to eat much more than a croissant and gummy bears today.  I sat at the top of the pass with UTMB runners collapsing around me at the top of their climb, I silently felt their exhaustion.  I searched down the trail for Kat’s pink hat and Carly’s purple bag in the stream of runners that continued up from the Aosta Valley but saw nothing.
 
Eventually, off on a ridge just below me, I finally saw my pink hat.  Kat and Carly were sitting taking a break before the final bit of the climb.  I started down, excited to see them, excited to help and excited to know that everyone would be okay even if it was about to be a long afternoon getting down to La Fouley.  When I got to Kat, I gave her a big hug, took her bag from her and she was so excited to see me she threw up some more!  Just a little baby barf, we laughed it off and made it to the top of the col.  It felt like days since I had seen them, but it had been just a few hours.  We sat and stared off across the valley before we started walking again.  
 
After what felt like ages, we got off the mountain and rejoined the road into La Fouley, a two mile walk to town.  We were all feeling tired, hungry and ready for rest, it had been a long day.  We stuck out a thumb for the few cars that passed us on the road down the dead-end valley with no luck.  Eventually, our fortunes turned, a little red car with three French folks about the same age as us stopped.  The two girls crammed into the front passenger seat and the three of us with our bags crammed into the back seat, we were off.  The guy driving zoomed down the two-mile road in 5 minutes, something that would have taken us almost an hour to walk.  As we got to town, we started passing runners, honking and cheering out of the windows, it was a fun end to an eventful day.
 
The four of us, back together, ate dinner, chicken nuggets and fries, and discussed our plans for the next day.  Carly and I would hike on and Kat and Alex would bus to Champex, skipping about 9 miles of gentle trail but getting a good day of rest in before we could all hopefully hike together again. I realized writing this, that I only took one picture this crazy, yet beautiful day.  I was staring up at the mountains in the last light of the day before crawling into my tent, exhausted yet very happy.

Our fifth day on trail was uneventful, the trail wandered through small Swiss villages with little cafés setup to cater to hikers on their journey around the mountain.  The day only had one climb, a gentle one, up to Champex to end the day.  Carly and I were feeling good but very ready for lunch.  We met up with Kat and Alex and sat at a bistro by the lake enjoying a nice afternoon and hoping to get a swim in before afternoon rain was expected.  It seemed like things were back on track.
 
We hiked out of town to the campground I had booked for the night, what I had failed to see was that the campground was a steep hike up a side trail out of town, not my best planning…  It was a cozy refugio up a side valley with views of the southern Mt. Blanc Massif towering behind it.  Once we got there, we sat and rested.  Carly told us she was feeling a little uneasy in the stomach and we all silently had the thought that it was now her turn two days after us.  I went to shower, keeping my thoughts to myself.

Walking back out to the tents, I saw Carly upset, she had thrown up which meant her turn with Noro had just begun.  As with the rest of us, it was a shitty five hours or so, no comfort and a constant feeling you need more water in your body that you could barely keep down.  We seemed to have hit a wall with our journey, no one in 100% condition and yet another member of the team down with sickness, likely needing a day or two to recover.
 
The decision was made that we’d all head down to Orsiéres in the morning via bus and get Carly on a train to Chamonix.  If she was feeling good enough to get herself to a hotel, the other three of us would do the last climb to Refugio du Col de Balme to spend the night on the Swiss-French boarder and meet up in Chamonix the next day.  When we made it to the train station, there were dozens of other hikers there, many had gotten sick themselves or someone in their party was sick.  It seems as if a massive outbreak had rolled across the TMB and we weren’t the only ones suffering from it.
 
Carly ended up feeling well enough to continue on her way alone, so we bussed to Triént and started the 3,000’ climb up out of Switzerland back to the Chamonix Valley in France where we had started.  Rain clouds rolled in and a light breeze blew down the valley.  As we broke treeline, an on and off mist started, but so did the blueberries.  The next mile I did nothing but shovel my mouth full of blueberries which apparently grow great in the wild in this area above 2,000 meters (~6,500’).  Wild blueberries have a different flavor to them, sweeter than your grocery story variety and so juicy they stain your fingers a blueish purple as you pick them.   It was a good climb for me.

As we neared the top of the climb and the safety of the refugio, the mist picked up into a steady deluge.  I honestly enjoyed the hell out of it, a little change-up.  The refugio was warm and cozy, coffee, tea, snacks and a great music playlist, the perfect mix of throwbacks and contemporary music filling the space.  We got our wet clothes off and settled in for the afternoon.  The keeper told us that we’d have our own room but he wouldn’t open the upstairs until 4pm, none of us cared, the fact we’d have our own room was music to our ears.  Dinner was a delicious plate of buttered noodles with a thick chicken thigh and for dessert a big cup of yogurt with a heaping spoon of Nutella or wild blueberry jam, you can imagine which one I picked.

We shared our table with a smattering of Americans from all over the country and one German who got dragged into our conversations.  He had some interest in the Pacific Crest Trail and I gladly shared my stories with him.  As the sun went down, we all headed outside and watched the clouds float over Mt. Blanc, the eastern sky was lit up with a brilliant orange glow as the rain clouds thinned.  I looked off to the west at the Argentine Glacier and the Mir de Glace, once the biggest glacier in Europe, and thought about how this place had changed and was changing.  I pondered the first people to find their way to the Chamonix Valley and how the glaciers used to terminate just feet outside of the city, now they were miles up the mountains.  I thought about how the Mir de Glace used to nearly pour out of the valley it had carved in pictures I had seen and now it disappeared into that same valley.  The world, even in my brief time on it, has irrevocably changed, likely for the worse, a startling thought.

The sun finally set and so did we into our bunks as the cold of a night high in the Alps set in.  Kat and I watched Lilo and Stich on my phone and Alex pattered away on his.  It was a nice final night on the trail, what I had hoped every night would be like, but our luck didn’t play out that way.  The next day we’d find our way down to Chamonix and enjoy long hot showers and cushy hotel beds.  We’d section hike some more of the TMB using the gondolas up La Brevent and the plentiful public transportation.  We'd enjoy a dinner of fondue, escargot, wine and all the other delicious French food you can think of before leaving Chamonix.  Although it wasn’t the full trip I’d planned for, we’d made the best out of it, everything was on the upswing, no hospital visits, no injuries and a fairly happy time in a fun and beautiful place.

With the remainder of our time in Europe we drove the long way through the Alps to Lake Como, as the tunnel under Mt. Blanc had closed for three months of maintenance just before we could sneak through into Italy.  We enjoyed pasta and pizza and the warm Italian sun by the water and contemplated hiding away on a rocky beach to never leave the shores of the lake again.  We shared quite a few bottles of wine and from the little cottage we’d rented, stared out across the lake at night as the lights lit up the shore and the silence made it seem like although we could see all the life around the lake, we were the only ones there.  It was a very peaceful way to end a complicated trip.

If you asked me today if I would hike the TMB again, I would say no.  I would love to climb Mt. Blanc one day, but I have lost my interest in European style hut hiking.  The Dolomites, the Haute Route, none of these catch my excitement anymore.  My experience might not be yours though, if we hadn’t all gotten sick from the unhygienic situation in the refugios my thoughts might be different.  For me, a lack of a feeling of wilderness is ultimately what it comes down to.  The Laugavgeur in Iceland was the perfect mix of amenities at huts and a feeling of wilderness during the day while you were out on trail and maybe that’s what I need to look for. I would love to someday go back to these places and experience them as the locals do, hike and run and explore from the comfort of a cushy bed and a private bathroom.
 
As this trip closes out my summer and Colorado quickly settles into fall with cold air already tumbling down from the mountains, I’ve started thinking about things closer to home.  As always, I’ll scheme in the back of my head but for the first time in a long time, I don’t have a major trip on the horizon, and I feel oddly at peace with that.  I look forward to staying closer to home for awhile, wandering around in the mountains here.  As always, thanks for following along with my stories, I write them to remember my journeys and maybe inspire some others on their own. ​​​​​​

"The Earth has music for those who listen."
- William Shakespeare