The Tour du Mont Blac (Part 2)
100 miles, 3 countries, and 11 days of trekking through the European Alps
This is part 2 of our Tour du Mont Blanc hike. Check out this post to get caught up on part 1.
Despite being a dreary day, we were in much better spirits on Day 4, having spent the night inside. We suited up in all our rain gear, which kept us nice and dry. We learned our lesson about that the previous day!
We’d been told the Italy side of the trail was one of the most spectacular portions, with Mont Blanc and friends on full display. Thanks to the inclement weather, the jagged peaks were obscured by fog with glaciers and mountains emerging down through the clouds. The scenery was ominous, yet beautiful. We were thrilled to be dry and surrounded by the staggering beauty of the Alps; fog and all.
The sun peeked through the clouds while we enjoyed lunch in the mountains overlooking Courmayeur. At this point on the trail, you can either hike the very long and steep descent down into the town, or you can take a quick and painless gondola ride down the mountain. We contemplated both options for a while. On one hand, we are purists and like to see an entire trail through. On the other hand, this descent was sure to aggravate my knee and would take us another 2 hours that we could instead be using in town to relax, do laundry, and run errands.
After much deliberation about the state of my knee, what was to come in our hike, how scenic we foresaw the steep section being, and more… we decided to take the gondola down. The trail happens to fo follow the same general trajectory as the gondola, so we felt assured we didn’t miss anything as we sat joyfully in the gondola, slowly being lowered into Courmayeur.
Courmayeur was enchanting as all get out. The gondola dropped us near our hotel where we meandered through quiet, narrow cobblestone streets. Baskets of brightly colored flowers adorned windows and terraces.
We took the opportunity to take care of our human necessities; laundry, showering, eating (fresh Italian pizza!), and of course, tracking down a much-needed knee brace.
On Day 5, we awoke to more rain that, to our excitement, managed to subside once we began hiking! We climbed up and out of Courmayeur, enjoying tremendous views of the Aosta Valley. Some of Mont Blanc’s friends even came out to play, though Mont Blanc itself continued to hide under a veil of dense fog.
The clouds shifted frequently throughout the day, sometimes exposing different clusters of peaks while obstructing others. We could tell this portion of the hike would have been magnificent on a clear day. Someday we will head back to Courmayeur and enjoy this section of the trail in sunny weather.
Day 6 would take us from Italy into Switzerland over a mountain pass known as Grand Col Ferret. We had heard murmurs from other hikers that there might be snow due to the low temperatures that day, but I thought they were crazy.
How very wrong I was.
Not long into the day, we spotted a group of hikers way high up on a mountain in the distance, trekking through snow. “Look at those people up there summitting that mountain!” We stopped to admire them along with another couple we met on the trail. We made jokes to each other like, “Not such a great day to summit that peak, huh?” Then we continued along the trail.
About an hour or so later, we realized we were going to be “summiting” that same snowy mountain. Only it wasn’t a summit; it was just part of the trail heading up to the pass and over into Switzerland.
The trail quickly turned snowy, slippery, and extremely blustery. Visibility diminished as we continued to ascend. Luckily, we were surrounded by a lot of other hikers. We knew they were there, even if we could no longer see them!
Hikers traveling the opposite distance seemed to appear out of thin air around 10 feet in front of us. The trail vanished in the snow and became tricky to follow as visibility continued to worsen. Eventually, we passed mountain bikers coming the opposite way (people take their sports to an entirely other level in the Alps), and we were thankfully able to follow their tire tracks up to the pass.
When we reached the pass, the wind was howling. Our fingers felt like popsicles. Our faces were hurting. We were squinting our eyes to avoid the whipping winds from delivering rockets of ice into our eyeballs. The Grand Col Ferret signage was frozen over with layers and layers of snow and ice as if it were the North Pole.
We definitely wouldn’t be eating lunch here!
We cruised quickly down the north side of the pass, which proved to be much less slippery than the south side. With a nice sloping grade, the north side of the pass proved to be a joy for my knee!
Down, down, down we went, zig-zagging at a gentle grade before finally reaching a refuge below the snow level to stop for lunch.
While enjoying lunch, we saw many of our hiker acquaintances and friends pass by, each one exclaiming, “How about that pass??!!”. It was the talk of the trail.
The rest of the day proved to be much more nonchalant; we followed a road through small hamlets and fields of cows before arriving at our campground a few hours later in the tiny town of La Fouly, Switzerland.
What a day it had been! Each day on this trail seemed to throw different obstacles at us, compelling our minds to be nothing but present and take one minute at a time. Aside from solitude and the beauty of nature, this is one of the most alluring things about hiking: Your mind is removed from the everyday stir of society and hectic living and, instead, you’re forced to focus on what’s in front of you and how to survive.
This might be crazy for some, but for us, it has become a way of life.
Part 3 of the Tour du Mont Blanc coming soon…