Tour du Mont Blanc, Day 1

I have done this multi-day hike a couple of times, but still, there was the first day nervousness. Do I even still remember how to hike, will I even have the patience to haul my 10 kg bag up to the mountains? I also feel like time flies and I have changed over the past years. A bit more impatient maybe, probably more of a crier. Will I be able to make it to the next rifugio without taking some kind of shortcut? Will I be disappointed in myself if I do end up taking a shortcut, and will it ruin the experience for me? I'm not sure why I had so many doubts and questions. Maybe because it had been a difficult year, and probably an intense hike is the least I needed right now, and yet I knew I had committed to this and I wanted to keep doing.

But I also know that everything is planned, and the planning has gone surprisingly well. It feels like the perfect time too, to do it. It's a bit counterintuitive that I am having more doubts than ever. In a way I'm actually more prepared than ever: we had two rest days before the hike, booked private rooms because it's the one thing I wished I had done in my past trips, bought more Compeeds than needed. And for me, I'm not alone this time, so this hike was supposed to be considerably easier, and so there was less for me to worry about.

We are here now in our chalet in Les Houches and today there is no going back. In a way our chalet is also situated 2 km into the trail, so we are already on the trail so to speak. The first few kilometers we walked on the gravel, and there were more and more hikers joining us, walking past us. I started to wonder if I'll ever see them again, if these people would be our group, or if I would see them again on my last day.

The ratio of solo versus group hikers seems to be 50:50. People's legs seem to be fresh, they were walking on a certain confident pace, and meanwhile I was trying to remember how to hike with an extra weight on my shoulders, how to take a break and not forget to drink water. I had to tell myself: drink water, it will lessen the weight on your shoulders. My right foot felt funny every time we had to walk on some rocky trails, and I wondered if it would stay like this, or if I just needed some time to get used to it.

After the gravel we finally saw a dirt path to the forest, but before we continued, we had our first water and banana stop to take in the view of the Chamonix valley sprawling before us. Dylan immediately noticed that we were pretty much following the path of the ski lift, and our stop was also where the ski lift station had ended. After the ski lift we went on to follow the railway tracks, still functioning, a train taking passengers to a higher stop. We couldn't really see exactly where it was headed to but it seemed to be closer to the glaciers.

I've always heard that the TMB is one of the most crowded long distance trails, but I never truly felt that was the case until we arrived at a bridge where we had to stop and pause for a while because there was a line of people wanting to take pictures. We also had a group of hikers ask us to take their pictures. It was a different first day of a hike than the one I'm used to, but at least we had a beautiful sunny day where everyone was taking pictures and taking multiple stops to enjoy the sight, instead of my first day in Alta Via 1 where everyone didn't have time to pose and was just trying to survive, make it to the next rifugio, and hold on to dear life.

At some point, our paths diverged from the main trail. TMB has many alternative paths that are usually called variants. The variants are typically harder but offer better vantage views. It was not my intention to do a variant on our first day but unbeknownst to us, we booked a rifugio that lies in the middle of the variant. There was no other way but to get there via variant Col du Tricot.

And boy oh boy did it make an intense first day. At this point I thought I had gotten used to hiking again, but then I had totally forgot how to manage steep climbs when it was scorching hot: every step felt like a pain and my heart rate shot up high. It took us a while to get to our first col of the hike, at 2120 m. We took the opportunity to take another break here, where I also recognized some of the hikers we saw earlier at the bottom. It was still 1h 20m to Chalets de Miage, a rifugio we would be passing by but not sleep for the night. Technically Chalets de Miage was just down there, and we could see the valley from where we were sitting, the reason why it took us another hour was because it was a very steep descent with very sharp switchbacks that seemed to go on forever and were definitely not easy on the knees.

But the switchbacks were worth it. The area surrounding Chalets de Miage was really the first time during the hike where I felt we were truly remote: we seemed to be far away from day hikers and train passengers and human made infrastructure like the ski lifts. As far as I could see it was just the mountains, glaciers, cows, and the chalet and few little houses scattered in the middle of the valley. Still, to reach our rifugio we had to do one final climb, and realizing that, we decided to take a short break at Chalets de Miage before powering through our last climb of the day.

This rifugio was rather rustic and minimal, totally unsurprising because we could feel this was quite a remote area. Everyone sleeps in the same room, there was no shower, washing clothes were forbidden to save water, and there were no electrical plugs in the bedroom, but it was not a problem for us. No shower means one less rifugio chore to do which means I could just go straight to unpacking and do my sketch of the day. We unpacked and headed outside, where we ordered some cheese, hot chocolate and spent the rest of the afternoon sketching, reading, trying to guess where every other hiker is from based on the languages they were speaking. Mostly it was a straightforward problem: we heard a lot of Dutch and some German, though the most puzzling one was a group of hikers who were speaking a language we didn't recognize, although we could hear some of them speak French to the people working at the auberge. Based on this information and also a quick consultation with a friend who studied linguistics, we made an informed guess that they were speaking Luxembourgish.

It was a beautiful day to be outside and we relished every single minute we were out until we were called for dinner. The Luxembourgish group even asked if they could have the dinner served outside instead because the sun was out and it was a beautiful first day on the mountain, but in these huts there's usually a particular arrangement for where everyone is seated and I knew that requesting changes would mean extra work for the staff. I usually refrain from requesting anything extra that would make their lives harder.

At the end of the day we were seated by ourselves, though we were hoping to be seated with others so we could get to know other hikers, and maybe confirm with the group if they were actually Luxembourgish. But it didn't really matter: we had a nice simple dinner of some vegetable soup, pasta, omelette, and a very special dessert which was creme brulee made with the milk from the cows living in the auberge. Some of the hikers walked past our table and asked me about the sketch that I made outside. I went to sleep pinching myself: I am really back in the mountains and I'm so excited for what's to come.