We slept in a hour today. It was windy when we set up the tent so we were careful to stake it down as best we could. That paid off and we both slept quite well, despite the smell of poo from the field we were in wafting through occasionally.
We planned to do a summit in the morning that would take 4 hours round trip. When we hiked to the junction to start the peak, we looked up, thought more about it, and decided against it. It didn’t seem like it would have afforded much better views that we were going to get on the normal route anyway.
We had rivers along our route today, and only a sad lake. We took a break in the morning near a nice spot in the river. Clemens and Luke joined us. It was ice cold but I still had to submerge myself. It was just too beautiful to pass up. We left with Luke, and said we’d see Clemens later. Ahead the trail forked and we said bye to Luke for good. It was his last day on trail and he was going to head back to Glasgow.
After the fork, we kept getting off track. Our trail seemed to get lost beneath the various cow tracks so we had to be more diligent than normal with our maps. We ate lunch in a tiny shade pocket afforded by a cliff. Afterwards, we descended to a popular tourist destination, apparently. We came upon a restaurant with a full parking lot. There was a popular hike to see the Cirque de Troumouse, which we walked around after climbing steeply from the parking lot. Not long after we reached that disappointing lake I mentioned earlier: it looked gross. I think it wasn’t very deep so it was more like a marsh. There were also a dozen cows on the shore. Instead of breaking there like we had hoped, we continued on to an unstaffed hut another 30 minutes beyond the lake.
It’s quiet here, people wise. Most folks on the HRP take another route today, but we didn’t take it because we don’t need to end our day at a staffed Rifugio. We have a tent. That’s a big criticism we have about the predominant guide people are using, by Cicerone, which ends each day at a hut. We’d rather camp anyway, and this route, provided the snow isn’t too bad, should be more interesting tomorrow. We’ll meet back up with other HRP hikers after 3 hours or so tomorrow, but more likely we’ll see them in our next town of Parzan. We’re thinking of staying a bit longer in/near Parzan to watch the World Cup finals on Sunday evening. It seems like watching the finals, Spain vs Argentina, in Spain, would be quite fun.