Well another day, another trail. And a new country. Allow me to fill you in on what you missed.
Today is Tuesday. We finished hiking the Alta Via 2 on Saturday afternoon and spent a night in Feltre, Italy. We spent most of Sunday traveling via train, to Martigny, Switzerland. We spent Sunday and Monday night at a campground in Martigny and today we woke up and took trains and a bus to Champex Lac to start our next hike.
In Martigny, the first day we arrived, we basically did nothing. We bought some microwaveable rice and cans of beans from the grocery store at the train station since that was the only store open on Sundays. We walked to the campground, ate, and fell asleep. On Monday, our true rest day, we first went and acquired a moving box, then went and bought packing tape, then packed everything we don’t need for hiking into said box, and then I carried the awkwardly large, 17kg box 20 minutes to the Swiss post office. In the beginning my arms kept giving out (hiking really atrophies your arms) and I’d have to rest the box on random pieces of city infrastructure. Then I realized pain is weakness leaving the body I could alternate between carrying the box up on my shoulder with my neck at a horribly awkward angle and just carrying the box in front of me. By alternating, I no longer needed to rest and we got there faster. I was still sweaty. It cost us ~$26 to mail the box to our desired post office in Switzerland, which will hold it free of charge for 30 days. This is definitely the way to move your stuff around when hiking: use the local postal system.
Today, we had a train to catch at 7:15, so we were up around 5:45. It’s now dark at that time. It was also nice and cool out. I used the campground’s kettle to make myself an effortless cup of tea before we left. I love flicking a button to get boiling water.
We walked to the train station with 3 days of food and our regular backpacking supplies. It was a bit lighter than the day before when we had all our stuff with us, but still heavier than the Alta Via 2, where we carried little food and almost no camping gear. We had 2 trains and a bus to take, all with 1 minute transfer times. In Switzerland though, this is no problem. Particularly if you download their train app, then you know the platform number of every train so you don’t have to consult any boards at each stop. We walked effortlessly from train to train to bus. It was pretty easy, if you knew what you were doing.
We arrived in Champex Lac at 8:02. The plan is to first do the Tour du Mont Blanc (TMB), which is a circular trail, first. That will end back in Champex Lac, at which point we will continue on the Walker’s Haute Route (WHR) to Zermatt. The two trails overlap by about 3 days and by starting our hike in Champex Lac, we avoid having to repeat any of the overlapping sections. Most people start the Tour du Mont Blanc in a different town, Chamonix. Since it’s a circle, it really doesn’t matter where you start, but Chamonix is logistically easier to get to and from. The path we intend to take should be a circle (TMB) followed by a trail leading out from the circle (WHR). So day 1 is our first part of the circle.
I scoped out the small food shop in town, since it may be an option for us to get more food in the future. It was worse than our supermarket in Martigny in terms of prices and supplies so we’ll try to avoid it. Speaking of prices, if you didn’t know, Switzerland is pricey. What used to cost us $80 in France and Spain, cost us over $120. It’s not a perfect comparison since $80 got us 4 days of food and $120 in Switzerland only got us 3, but it also provided us with some, relatively, expensive dinners we ate at the campground, but 50% more expensive seems about right. So we’ll be back to hiking, sleeping in a tent, and preparing our own food much as possible on this hike, as opposed to the huts that underfed me on the Alta Via.
We weren’t sure how far we’d go today in part because we weren’t sure how early we were going to start and also because we weren’t sure how energetic we would be feeling. We did have at least one main climb to do out of Champex Lac. I’ve been compelled to mention that for the TMB portion of the hike, we’ll be doing as many variants as we feel like. These are alternative trails that Zoë researched that take you to the same place but are often more scenic, usually at the expense of being harder. So our experience and specific route will vary from any purist or anyone looking for info strictly about the TMB. We don’t care about the official route, we just want to maximize the views.
So our climb out of Champex Lac quickly became our first alternate which went over Fenêtre d’Arpette, a steep pass. Now since this was the first thing we did on the TMB, I can’t compare it to much of the rest of the trail yet. It was fairly steep at times. It was also fairly technical. There were also quite a few people on the trail, more so than the Dolomites. The views were good, sort of the classic, alpine terrain. Over the pass though, we were greeted with views of a glacier though, which were quite good.
At the top it was actually fairly chilly. You could definitely tell Fall is coming. The sun appears to be arcing lower in the sky. The plants haven’t really taken notice yet as there aren’t many reds present. I’m excited though. I miss the cider donuts from the Fall back home.
The descent down the other side was fairly steep. We stepped out of the way for many people ascending the pass in the other direction. We stopped to have lunch on a bench we found in some shade provided by what appeared to be a derelict shelter. Down from the top, it was warmer in the sun. A far cry from hot, but no longer crisp. The weather has been so great since we arrived in the Alps in mid August.
After lunch we continued descending and stopped briefly in a forested spot to read. Then we got to thinking the campground we were heading to might fill up, so we probably should proceed there and do all of our relaxation once we had a campsite secured.
We took some option to the campsite that had us walking on a paved road. That was pretty glorious. Zoë got new shoes and while she didn’t want to praise a piece of gear too early, was overjoyed with the new grip she had. Either the Altra’s with Vibram bottoms make a difference or her old shoes were really shot. Let’s wait til we’ve put a couple hundred miles on them to see.
We got to the campground, which is just an open area covered in grass. We get to pay for the privilege, I think about $8/person. They have bathrooms and showers. I’m not sure I’ll shower tonight. We have limited soap and shampoo and no towels. While the towels thing won’t change, I’m not sure it’s worth using the soap this early. Maybe we’ll meet some people here tonight! Plenty of people are setting up tents. We also have a view of the glacier from camp, which is super cool. Not a bad start!