Tour du Mont Blanc, Day 7

I woke up before my alarm rang to the sound of cow bells. Apparently as I predicted yesterday, the cows were awake before my alarm did. I felt much fresher than yesterday and was really glad I decided to call the night early to recover from yesterday's shenanigans. Today's breakfast was the standard TMB breakfast: bread, jams, cheese, coffee, and tea. But one difference was the butter was especially so, so good, and I suspected that just like the ice cream, it was probably made by the milk of the cows living nearby.

According to the guidebook, today would be long but it would be relatively easy, since we would be walking mostly through the valley. It would be like a walk that is reminiscent of The Sound of Music, my guidebook says (to which Dylan said: we are in the wrong country!). This I believe was also the first day on the TMB where there would be much more descent than ascent, which probably means we wouldn't have been as close to the glaciers as yesterday, but I was curious what the scenery would look like today.

Today Sophie and Pascale would be headed to the same area, but a different lodging. We would be staying in Relais D'Arpette while they would be sleeping in another lodging a kilometer before ours, so we both were still headed to the Champex-Lac area and I was sure we'd see them again on the trail anyway. The TMB world is small!

As soon as we stepped out we were already presented with a decision to make: which way to go to Ferret?

We decided that it didn't matter anyway, both paths will take us to the same Swiss Ferret, the only difference seems to be that one would take you to the bus stop. We read that there is a bus that runs from this stop all the way to the village of Issert, the last village before the climb to Champex-Lac, and this is a nice option if you have to do double stages in one day and need to shave off some hiking time, or, if you just don't feel like walking. But we both did feel like walking today, and I thought I had tackled some harder days anyway, a 22 km day with a 680 m ascent didn't seem like a big deal anymore.

The main theme of the day was Swiss villages. There are a few villages that lie in the Val Ferret: Ferret, the first village we visited; La Fouly, the biggest of them all; Praz de Fort; Issert. When I say villages, they were really tiny villages that probably hosted ten different houses at most (I think the housing complex I grew up in has close to 60 houses in a much smaller area!), and all of these houses were decorated in such an orderly manner, it was fascinating to observe. After making it out of the forest path, we walked most of the villages on gravel road, which was definitely a big change from the past few days, but it was nice that no days in the TMB are ever the same. We made a brief stop in La Fouly to get some lunch since we weren't sure we would walk past any other restaurant or hut before we make it to Champex-Lac, and since there seems to be no restaurant open in La Fouly, we got ourselves some baguettes and meat cuts from the minimarket to make our own sandwich.

It was kind of like a walk in the park and although it was easy, I could feel the temperature warming and it was starting to get to me. It was probably the warmest I had experienced on the TMB. I was sweating buckets and starving by the time it was lunchtime and we found a spot in a small resting area that wasn't particularly scenic, but at least it has some seatings and a table and some cows nearby. Plus, there was a toilet equipped with everything Dyson. It was probably the fanciest public toilet I had ever seen in my life.

We headed to the last village, Issert, and afterwards it would be a steady climb to Champex-Lac. We were in shades most of the time, since we were still below the tree line, but the warmth combined with the mileage really tired out my legs. Apparently this trail was also called the didactic mushroom trail and the trail has a mascot called "Charlotte le Marmotte". Along the way there were many cute wood-stump carvings and we also came across a large mysterious cave that had no sign whatsoever, we also couldn't find any information about it on Google Maps on AllTrails. It was really dark and no one was there so we decided to get the hell out of it as soon as we stepped in.

I was so happy to see the "Welcome to Champex-Lac" sign after the continuous ascent - it was an "easy" day but the ascent was a reminiscent of the Bertone day where it was unrelenting and we had very little opportunities to walk on a flat terrain until we got to the top. Our hut was not directly in Champex-Lac so even after arriving in Champex-Lac we still had two or three kilometers ago. In fact, our hut was not on the original TMB trail so this was a little bit of a detour, and despite today being an easy day, this detour made it an even tougher day (on top of the very warm weather).

Champex-Lac is a large lake and it was crystal blue when we got there. I mean it was a harsh hiking weather but it was a perfect one for lounging around in the lake, eating ice cream, that sort of stuff. I really wish I was not in my hiking outfit and I wish we didn't have to rush to our hut! It made me think of how Anish and Sloane would have two days to spend here and I thought they made a really good decision to do their rest days here.

Dylan asked me if I want to get ice cream and I said, I really, really want to but I was afraid we would be late for dinner, so we continued all the way to Relais d'Arpette. I believe it was a good call, because first, the way to get to Relais d'Arpette was a bit confusing. Second, we were held up by a large-ish group of hikers who were also staying in Relais d'Arpette, which I believe was the first big group of hikers we had seen on the trail.

Eventually we made it to Relais d'Arpette just before dinnertime, and thank goodness we had the foresight to get ourselves a private room tonight because I really needed it! Dinner was served buffet-style - also first time I see this on the TMB: salad, chili con carne, some fruits, and surprisingly we also saw the Dutch trio again. We had never really chatted properly, except for a few small exchanges, but we were excited to see each other as we have slowly become familiar faces. I feel like it's a uniquely hiking thing where you suddenly become so familiar with the hikers you meet in passing, even if you haven't spoken to them for long, because - especially as the days go by - you continue to experience the same things: the same route, the same terrain, the same weather, the same scenery. You know that even though sometimes you don't know their names, you can make long conversations with them after accumulating the same experience on the trail. We were sat in the same table so we caught up on the last few days since we haven't seen them since Rifugio Bertone. We talked a lot about our hiking trips, about visiting the highest village in France, about living in Berlin and seeing Nick Cave.

Today's situation, where an easy day ended up feeling more like a medium-hard day, made me double check our next day's itinerary. Also I guess at this point I had a better sense of how tomorrow would look like, since now I have a good idea of how a 1000 m ascent would look like, how a cold or hot day would be like. For tomorrow, I had booked Refuge du Col de Balme after browsing various itineraries, and while my note said we would have to cover 16 km in distance but the ascent made me do a double take: 1895 m. 1320 descent. Was this a typo? I rechecked and no, this was not a typo - this is how our route would look like if we make it all the way to Col de Balme via d'Arpette variant, which is probably the most challenging variant on the trail that I'm not sure we were going to take anyway.

Our guidebook did contain all of the existing variants on the trail, so I spent dinnertime trying to do some routing gymnastics to see if there was a sane way to get to Refuge du Col de Balme without killing ourselves in the process. I also saw that tomorrow's weather would be as hot, if not hotter than today. A long day via d'Arpette variant with a very warm weather would be miserable - I scoured Youtube to see videos of how the d'Arpette variant looks like, and it looks like we would most likely be exposed, with no trees to provide shades from the sun. The answer given all of the information that we now had, plus our experience on the trail so far, was a resounding no, pushing ourselves to Refuge du Col de Balme didn't seem like the best idea.

As a chronic planner, it was hard to accept this - I couldn't believe I made this mistake during my planning! We had to frantically make phone calls to various huts along the way, to see if there was still an empty bed. Another backup plan we had was to make it to the Dutch trio's hut, Auberge Mont Blanc, and just show up without any reservation. Finally Dylan's call went through to Col de la Forclaz and we secured a bed for tomorrow.

And so our crisis was resolved and we celebrated by getting ourselves an even fancier ice cream from the restaurant. I think we really deserved this.