We had an unideal neighbor last night. The guy continued talking at full volume in his tent well after it was dark. His companion wasn’t so loud, but he never caught on. And then he snored loudly. Thankfully he packed up in the morning so although we’ll be here another night, at least we’ll get to roll the dice with a new neighbor.
It rained a bit in the early morning. We closed our tent doors. We have a habit of sleeping with them open. It means there’s more air flow, less chance of condensation, and less wear on the zippers when we get in and out of the tent, which seem to be particularly problematic on Durston tents. Anyway we closed the outer doors, but we didn’t do much else. Unfortunately water made its way into our tent, which we realized after we woke up, because it wasn’t optimally pitched, which is a thing with these ultralight tents. We also had the groundsheet protruding a bit, which acted as a funnel to pull water under the tent. We’ve got rain forecasted on Wednesday so we need to be better prepared.
Since we were coming back to this campground at the end of the day, we got to leave most of our stuff behind and do what is called slack packing. Basically all we had to do was carry our food for the day. We left everything else in our tent, but I needed the trekking poles to hike so we took out the only thing holding our tent up off the ground. So we basically left a wet pile of stuff, with no way for it to air out.
We caught the first bus from our campground at 8:30, back down to Courmayeur. From Courmayeur, we resumed our hike, by hiking on a road out of town. Since we had to start when the bus ran, our start coincided with a lot of other groups. We passed many of them on the way out of town but got caught right behind a group of 8 just as the road turned to trail. It took forever for us to find an opening to pass them, but once we did, we were off to the races. I think we shaved an hour off the estimated time on our climb up. I had the sweat stains to prove it. I was absolutely drenched.
Most of the way up the climb, the trail split and we took another variant. This variant was supposed to be very scenic, weather permitting. As we continued to climb up, we didn’t see anyone else anymore. Below, it was still very crowded. No one followed us up.
We climbed up until my watch said we had done 3,500ft of climbing. Honestly it felt like it should have been more. We’d been climbing non stop. We reached a ridge and the trail flattened out. The views started off good and would only get better. I couldn’t believe no one else was up here! Apparently the race, UTMB, used to take this variant until around 2002, when they rerouted the course to a lower trail, probably because the weather was less stable up high. I couldn’t believe how great the views from this ridge were. We had front row seats to so many different glacial fingers. And there wasn’t a person in sight.
I had assumed that we had done all or most of our climbing for the day, so you’ll understand that I was grumpy when our ridge started to go up. At first I thought it wasn’t going as high as it was, but then I spotted some people ahead even higher. I had underestimated (read: not prepared at all) for the lack of water on the hike. This meant that not only could I not drink to my hearts content, I also couldn’t eat my dry foods without using water to wash it down. I think I was more mad about my lack of preparation than the climbing, but I blame the additional climbing.
When we finally did get to the top, we had one last look back at our spectacular panoramic view before steeply descending down the other side. Thankfully there was a river crossing ahead so I could get some more water. It was lunch time so we stopped for lunch, with some cows in the grass below us.
While we were eating, one cow came up the hill towards us. Initially I assumed it was going to the water and just taking the path it knew, to get there. Then it started inching closer and closer to us. Eventually I stood up to let it know it was too close. This did not deter the cow. It looked at me. I wanted to encourage it to take another path to the water so I started swinging my trekking pole in its face, hoping to deter it. This did not have the intended effect. The cow was not intimidated by the pole. When it took another step forward, we gathered up our things quickly, preparing to relocate. I decided it was time to make contact with the cow so I bopped it on the nose with my pole. I don’t think I did it hard enough because the cow seemed to try to sniff the pole. Then the cow walked forward to Zoë’s backpack and started licking the hip belt. I hit the cow in the side with my pole, to no effect. I tossed a small rock underhand at the cow, also to no effect. Fuck it cow, you win. We grabbed our stuff and walked further up hill and sat on a large boulder. The cow sniffed where we had been, presumably looking for more salt to lick, and then just laid down in our old spot. Jerk.
After lunch we had to climb up from the river. It was so hard. My stomach was trying to digest lunch and there was no blood flow left for my legs. It was awful. Also the views weren’t as spectacular as before, so all I could do was soak in my discomfort. I made it though. Up and over.
The views were great again on the descent. Before leaving our alternate and rejoining the main trail, we passed through a flock of sheep that seemed indifferent to us. There were several lambs amongst them, which was quite cute. Down at the junction with the TMB, we were met with plenty of people again. Not tons, but people we could see in all directions. I can’t believe hardly anyone else was taking that variant. This was by far my favorite day on trail. It’s the one variant I would recommend people do. Also, if you come to this area, this is the one day hike I’d recommend people do. The buses in town are free, so you can park in town and take a bus back at the end of the day. You’d get the best views on the whole TMB, I suspect. We technically have one day left (tomorrow) to close out the TMB, but I’m fairly confident today will be the best.
Down at the bus stop, we joined about 75 other people waiting for the bus. It comes every 30 minutes, I think, but this must be the popular time. I don’t know how we also landed in that window. When the bus arrived we all crammed in, Zoë and I smooshed up against a window. The 30 minutes or so to town thankfully went by quicker than I expected. We opted to skip our campsite and get more gelato in town since it was our last day in Italy, and then try to do all our chores before we ran out of time. The gelato was excellent, again.
We got back to the campground and went to work on our chores: showers, a load of laundry, cooking dinner, preparing food for departing tomorrow, and trying to charge all of our various electronic devices. I thought I might have time to make some phone calls, but I didn’t even come close. Even out here with no distractions, we still run out of time in a day. But what a great one today was.