Last night we had a nice sunset with an artificial lake providing some photogenic reflections. After snapping some photos though, I went straight to bed.
We woke up at 6, in the dark. There were quite a few tents around the lake with us. We left at 7 and headed up the nearby hill where a ski lift topped out.
Like the other days, the trail was pretty quiet at 7:00. There were a few people out, but not many. We traversed ski areas, so aside from the nice mountains above us, our immediate surroundings were a bit lackluster.
Around 9 we reached another ski lift and here we stopped traversing and started climbing. As soon as we started climbing, we looked down and noticed tons of paragliders taking off into the valley below. It seemed like the most epic location ever to paraglide. We both agreed: we’d look into it and see if we could do it. My birthday is in a few days and we’ve neglected to really celebrate either of ours during our time away. Mostly they happen when we’re already doing something else and interrupting the something else would be too difficult or not worthwhile. Last year for my birthday, we were on the PCT in Lake Tahoe. We had shitty, free pizza. It was really just another PCT day.
We talked about our 3 options for paragliding:
- interrupt our hike and do it tomorrow. This would mean we’d have to re-plan some of the days since we couldn’t hike as far if we took part of the day to do this.
- Do it at another point on this hike. Maybe a later point would be even more epic.
- Do it after this hike. Finish the hike, then come back over here and do it later. Then we don’t interrupt anything.
The problem with 2 and 3 is they’re just harder and we probably wouldn’t do it if we waited longer. Also, who knows what the weather will be like later in September. So we decided we’ll do it tomorrow. Zoë figured out the new logistics over lunch, which basically means we’ll take a day longer and carry an extra day of food on the next section. No big deal.
We continued climbing up to a high point, which gave us great views of Mont Blanc. The lighting was a lot better earlier in the day, and now that it was around 11:00, it was so bright you had to squint to look at the glaciers atop the mountain. We took a brief break at the top and decided not to purchase a coke for €5.50.
The descent was steep and fairly rocky. A lot of today was fairly rocky so today felt pretty slow moving. We were in full sun and descended until we got to some trees, where we ate our lunch on the side of the trail.
After lunch we had more descending and the crowds began to thin as the options for alternative trails increased. It definitely still felt like Fall, but one of those Fall days where the sun still remembers Summer in the afternoon.
Eventually we made it all the way down to a road, after several hours of descending. Thankfully much of the descent was in shade. We took a break on a curb in the shade while we researched what to do next. The campground we were planning to stay at didn’t open until 16:00 and it was currently 14:45. We needed more food, so we went to the grocery store that was a 15 minute walk away.
Man what a nice surprise it was to grocery shop in France again. The prices were so reasonable. If we thought it might enhance our meals, into the cart it went! What a great feeling, rather than agonizing over each item like I did in Switzerland. We stripped out all the extra packaging from our food in the parking lot and then started the 30 minute walk to our campground.
The campground is fairly basic but totally acceptable. Checkout isn’t until 12:00pm tomorrow so our plan is to leave everything here, paraglide from 9-10, and then come back before checkout to grab our stuff. The paragliding is in the opposite direction of our hiking, in the town of Chamonix. Our campground however, is right where we need to be. We’re both really looking forward to tomorrow. At least the part before we start hiking again.