Tour du Mont Blanc, Day 9

We started the day with a quick standard TMB breakfast. At this point I wasn't sure if I'd see anything else other than bread, jams, coffee, tea, and the occasional yogurt during breakfast, maybe not! We left Col de La Forclaz under an overcast sky and it looked like the weather would stay like this for the entire day. Our first milestone would be to reach Refuge Le Peuty, a hamlet that lies in the Trient valley. This descent was straightforward and easy and we reached Refuge Le Peuty after an hour or so.

As we entered the area of Refuge Le Peuty, I could hear singing and chatters coming from a particular big group that we had seen yesterday, and immediately my mood dropped. There were many big groups yesterday of what must have been larger than 8 people or so. I am happy with people enjoying nature, it makes me happy to see people out there and explore the world. But I genuinely think common sense must be used: annoyance aside, hiking in big groups is generally a hazard. I didn't know why they didn't split themselves into smaller groups and stagger their departures.

I could see them leaving leaving Refuge Le Peuty still in their big party of 10. Hiking behind them, and doing the should-I-pass-you game for the entire day with this group would have been a nightmare and absolutely ruin my day. It would have been a shame to spend one of the last days of the TMB getting annoyed! Dylan checked AllTrails to make sure which way to go to make it to our next stop, which is Refuge Col de Balme, but he also saw that there was an alternative, trail that would have led us to the same place anyway. Instead of taking the path to the left to Chiuset, this non-official trail would have brought us to Les Tseppes. Our guidebook provided no information about this trail, but looking at the elevation profile on AllTrails it looks to be steeper than the original trail. Normally, choosing a trail that even our guidebook didn't describe would have made me nervous, but my priority right now was to get away from this group of hikers.

And so at the fork we took the other way, and we went on our merry way to a mostly deserted path. We didn't really see anyone for the first hour or so, and later on we would see two hikers coming the opposite direction. It was such a stark contrast to yesterday's hike, and I really relished in the silence and the fact that there was no one else but us on the trail. This allowed me to enjoy the trail more, now that I didn't have to think about leapfrogging big groups of hik even if with the weather being not so good and the ascent being quite challenging.

I would have loved to stay longer once we made it out past the tree line, but the grey clouds looked quite threatening and so we moved on and continued pressing onto Refuge Col de Balme. To our right, we could see the sweeping view of the Trient valley, and despite the haze we could still make out a big dam in the distance, which we later looked up is a dam called Barrage d'Emosson. Next to it was a fully operational Mini-Funiculaire d'Emosson that would take passengers from the bottom of the dam to the top and back. It was fun to watch the furnicular going up and down from where we were walking, across the valley.

Approaching Refuge Col de Balme, we entered the largest sheep kingdom we have seen to date:

And later on we stopped at Refuge Col de Balme for lunch. It was really crowded, because there is a ski lift just around the corner so many people would take this ski lift from the valley, but we could really use some extra energy for our final push towards Gite Le Moulin.

Something I almost forgot to mention is today we also had our third and final border crossing! And conveniently the border was located just right in front of Refuge Col de Balme. Even though this is our third border crossing, this is the first time we actually saw a monument that explicitly says this is a border between Switzerland and France:

As always in the TMB, there are two options to reach Gite Le Moulin from Refuge Col de Balme. First was to head down to the valley and reach Gite Le Moulin via Le Tour - this would be the easy option, and highly recommended in case of bad weather. The second option was to make a second summit to Aguilles des Posettes. Given the seemingly impending thunderstorm, we opted to descend down to Le Tour immediately. As soon as we started our descent, we encountered our first raindrops on the trail since Bertone.

We reached Gite Le Moulin and we were welcomed by Pascale, who had been taking the bus today since he had an injury, and Sophie who was hiking alone. The past two sections, with all the crowds and probably their proximity to civilization, sometimes made me think we're not in the TMB that I knew during our first few days. But their constant presence made me feel like yes, we were still on the same hike, so it was really nice to see them again at the end of the day. They introduced us to the owner of the lodging, and I'm not sure if it was the cold from the rain or something else, but I really felt like we were welcomed with such warmth both by our hiking friends and the staff of Gite Le Moulin.

We were good with time as it turns out, probably because we descended rather quickly to avoid the incoming rain, so we still had plenty of time to unpack, shower, and even do some sketches while sipping hot chocolate. I decided to sketch the hut itself, which interestingly was situated just right below the railway of the Chamonix valley train that we took on our first day in Chamonix. Sophie and Pascale were chatting across where I was sketching, and sometimes she would drop by to see what I was sketching, and also show me some of the crafts she has made herself - besides being an impressive runner, she is also a really crafty crocheter! My mind was truly blown.

Seeing this scene unfold in front of me, I thought it would be the perfect scene to sketch and also the perfect gift for Sophie.

The four of us sat together during for dinner. This would be our last dinner together because tomorrow, we would head for Chamonix while they would stay at La Flegere for one night. Sitting with other fellow foodies is always a delight since we had so much fun trying out our dinner and chatting with the staff about the food being served - tonight's dinner were some of our favorite meals on the TMB: salad, potatoes with sausage, and instead of a fancy ice cream, we unexpectedly had some melon pineapple merengue for dessert, which was a nice surprise. We stayed up talking until we were too tired, but before we all headed back to our own dorm, I gave Sophie the sketch that I made earlier, which included both her and Pascale chatting as the train passed by.

I have given sketches as a gift to a few people but this was definitely one of my favorites. I genuinely felt happy to have met both of them on this trail, and I also love that I could capture them in the right moment. (Edit: Sophie would later send me a picture of the sketch framed in her house!)