Tour du Mont Blanc, Day 10

Every morning in the TMB so far, I would always wake up to other hikers skillfully completing their morning routine, packing their bags, and eating their breakfast in an almost-rushed manner, eager to start the day. But not this morning. This morning felt very still, quite literally: after breakfast, we found these usually energetic bunch of hikers sitting still in the hut's living room, looking out at the window, waiting for the rain to stop.

"It says the rain will stop at 9," Sophie said, showing me her weather app. Her game plan was to avoid the rain and start moving when the rain has stopped, since it was no use to start walking and getting yourself drenched in the rain only for the rain to stop an hour later or so. Everyone else seemed to have the same plan, and it definitely made sense, so we also decided to stay put. But the next question remained: what do we do with the rest of the day? Does it even still make sense to still hike up to La Flegere, when the trail is wet and visibility is so bad we could even barely see the hills beyond the village of Montroc?

Sophie and Pascale said they had no choice, since they had booked a hut up in La Flegere for the night. The hike was necessary for them so they could have a refuge for the night. But for us, who would be heading to Chamonix anyway, Pascale gave us his two cents. He said there is no use hiking up to La Flegere in this weather especially if we had no reason other than to see the view, because he guaranteed we wouldn't be able to see anything from up there. It would all just be white, and pushing ourselves to hike in this wet weather and possibly precarious trail, only to be rewarded with no view, would make a miserable hike.

But what is the alternative here, to reach Chamonix from Montroc? Does it mean we walk on the gravel road in the valley all the way from Montroc? To me it seemed to be an anticlimatic end to our big TMB hike, and while I knew it didn't make sense to ascend and descend again in this weather, I knew I would go home feeling a sense of incompleteness, knowing that I didn't really "hike" on the last day. Especially not on the official TMB trail. Will I actually really "complete" the TMB?

Pascale, being familiar with the area, gave us a suggestion that not even our guidebook has mentioned: there is actually a (quite literally) middle alternative, a forest trail that lies between the valley and the balcony path on the mountaintop. It still required us to hike - enough to make me feel like I was still hiking :) - but it was neither demanding nor technical. It seems like a good compromise for this unfavorable weather, and it's not like we hadn't been taking alternatives in the past few days, anyway.

The rain did lessen but it never really completely stopped, and so at some point everyone decided that it was time to get moving, rain or shine. We said goodbye to Sophie and Pascale, and made our way to Argentiere, one of the last bigger towns before Chamonix.

After losing Sophie and Pascale, we didn't really see any other hikers. When we entered the middle trail, Petit Balcon Sud, we came across some day hikers and bikers, but not really many other people with big backpacks like us. It really felt like we had exited our TMB bubble, and now we were just doing a day hike like everyone else that we came across, except that we had a bigger backpack.

Despite the less than ideal situation, I ended up really enjoying the trail. The trail was an easy forest trail, and while we were never actually really too far away from the villages and the main road that leads to Chamonix (we never really ascended more than 100 m today), the density of the trees meant that sometimes I forgot that we were actually pretty close to civilization. Plus, while we had also hiked through some forest trails a few days ago, we did those hikes during dry days, where the sun was scorching hot and the forest was dry. Today, it was the opposite. Although we had our raincoat on the whole time and it was uncomfortable at times, the moody atmosphere in the forest was truly something else that I hadn't experienced in the TMB so far. We definitely had an interesting day to end the TMB, that was probably a bit different from what I imagined when I read our guidebook. At the end, I was happy with the decision we made, since the weather never really improved anyway and we couldn't really see much of the mountains until the end of our hike today.

I wasn't sure where exactly the trail ended, but somehow we ended up having to navigate a golf course, and walked past two cable car stations, before reaching Chamonix.

The TMB was the first hiking loop that I had ever done in my life so despite the alternative route that we had to take today, I still felt a great sense of accomplishment knowing that we made it to where we started. It was also our first time doing a multi-day hike together, so the fact that we made it in one piece, together, and had a great time whether it was raining or shining, is definitely worth celebrating. Just as we entered Chamonix, we spotted a Nepalese restaurant and we agreed that it would be the perfect way to celebrate the end of our hike. We already started talking about what's for next year, which is a good sign. :)