DAY 30: Sunday July 1st: Les Contamines to Les Houches:
Walk: 19.5k 8hrs 30min: Fine, misty then rain, 19°C to 15°C
Accommodation: Hotel Beausite Les Houches
Leaving Gai Soleil Les Contamines New shorts, white legs, sunscreen
Misty sky , eerie forests
But magical glimpses of Alps
Col de Tricot 2120 metres - zig zags
After morning tea - 600m climb up
There's 60 people on way down
And the mist rolls in
An ibex on the way down too
Col de Tricot 2120 metres
At the Col de Tricot - 12.30pm
5 mins later the rain sets in
Suspension bridge over Bionnassay Glacier - if only i could see it
Not much to photograph - just cows
Trust me, it's nice down there
Next - Cold de Voza 1650 metres
Repairs to camera case after a wine
- a few pricked fingers.
France Meteo weather forecast got it right - rain in the afternoon. But we managed to climb Col de Tricot (2120 metres) before the rain and mist set in limiting visibility to 20 metres.
When we wake, there's patches of blue sky. First we skype home, I publish my blog then trot off to the boulangerie for fresh bread - we still have 1kg of Beaufort cheese and 2 sausages and with the tomatoes we bought yesterday, that’s lunch. Breakfast at 8am is again a guest house spread of yoghurt, cheeses, fresh bread and croissants with meusli and hot tea. After brekky, we hand our bag of extras to Mme Mamoud. Both our packs are significantly lighter. It's amazingly warm outside at 19°C. with high mist.
We (make that I) want to do the Col de Tricot, a variant of the Tour de Mont Blanc, a near vertical climb up 600 metre, which we hadn't done before. We leave through the back of the village then up into pine forests. It's so warm, we strip off to walk in shorts and tee shirts. There’s eerie glimpses of the alps through the mist. After 2 hrs, we reach a high point in the forest then descend into a green valley on slippery rocks. Once down we have a coffee brak and watch a stream of people coming from the col.
After morning coffee of bread and tomatoes, we soon pass the pretty Refuge Miage in the valley then hit the zig zags up 600metres to the col. We. We stop to make way for large groups of people descending - more than 60 people doing the traditional anti-clockwise route and who have approached the col from the back side. An English couple warn us of the mist on the other side of the col. It's very steep and gravelly - helter skelter the guide book notes - but it's worse as we’re against the flow of hikers coming down. A lone ibex wanders down the path like it owns it. Eventually we reach the top and there’s only us and 5 other people. We hen find a sheltered spot out of the now gusty wind. Ian boils the billy for a quick cup of tea then we head off down. We've only been walking 5 minutes before we stop to put on rain gear. It's not freezing, my thermometer says 15°C, but feels colder when it's wet and windy. My new gloves are waterproof but not very warm. I make do as I left my old ones back in Les Contamines.
Th rain has set in now and the rocks are slippery. We arrive at a semi dry spot under a large pine tree and stop for lunch - a quickie of bread, cheese, tomato and ham. It rains heavily as we cross the suspension bridge over the Bionnassay glacier which has retreated 2k in 20 years. We hear water rushing below and get wet from the spray. Further down, we see cattle appearing from nowhere out of the mist. The sharp descent becomes flatter and after a few kilometres of level walking, the track joins a gravel road which falls sharply to the Col de Voza at 1650 metres. We've now joined the normal route of the Tour de Mont Blanc. The Col de Voza has 2 restaurants and is the start of the Mont Blanc tramway taking tourists to a view point of Mont Blanc. The line is 12.4 km long and has a rail gauge of 1,000 mm. The height difference of 1,792 m from St Gervais where the line begins to Nid d'Aigle near the Bionnassay Glacier, has an average gradient of 15% and a maximum gradient of 24%. Just a bit of interesting trivia.
Despite the weather, there's many day trippers around. We sit on the same green seats we've used before to have a cup of tea. There's still a 600 metre descent. A 10 minute break and we're off again. It’s still drizzling but there's no wind and it’s not too cold. After 2 hrs of down, we step onto flat ground in Les Houches and walk through the village to the Hotel Beausite. We stayed here in 2009 with Graham and Jenny, but we can't duplicate our great dinner that we had outside in the garden - it's still raining.
We take off our shoes and ponchos, check in and strip off for a nice hot shower. Time to do a few repairs and cut a bit of velcro from a spare strap to attach it to Ian's camera bag. Time for dinner. No demi pension tonight, just a la carte so we choose one course, lamb, potato, carrots and beans with a nice red. - Ian's looking for a creme brulee - there's none - so we give dessert a miss. Now if you'd like to hear Ian's version of today's climb to the Col de Tricot, you'll have to ask Graham - man talk, I believe
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