Wednesday 31st August: Weather: 5°C to 21°C: Cold Start at Alpenzu, warming to 15°C, then 21°C Champoluc
Day 15 Alpenzu to Champoluc: 12.1k: 8am to 3pm: 7hrs 2 x 30 min stops
Ascent/Descent: Ascent 1,193m, Descent 1,382, Total up and down 2,575m
Accommodation: Hotel L’Aiglin Champoluc
Fantastic views to Monte rosa
Day 15 Highlights. Where do I start. An amazing day in the Alps. Clear Blue skies climbing to Col Pinter at 2,777 from Alpenzu with fabulous views to Monte Rosa. Then descending to Champoluc, such a pretty ski village with a back drop of Monte Rosa up the Main Street. A short day today with only 6hrs hiking not 9hrs like the past few days.
We’ve slept in and wake to the alarm at 6.45am. A bit of a scramble to have a shower and get down to a 7am breakfast we requested especially. It’s not a long day but we wanted to get to Champoluc early with lots of washing to do many emails to send re-confirming the next set of three refuges, all in a row. Hmm! Breakfast is really nice considering it’s a refuge with fresh yoghurt, muesli (Most muesli around Aosta is kids muesli - sprinkled with chocolate), bread, jams etc and a really nice hot cup of English Breakfast Tea.
Really cold 5°C and Monte Rosa
Ian can’t stop taking photos
Group of farms high on a plateau
3hrs and 1,068 metres Ascent to Col Pinter at 2,777 metres
Morning tea at Col Pinter 2,777 m
A grassy path towards Vieux Crest
Val d’ayes with Champoluc
Taking dinner back to Hotel L'Aiglon
It’s 8am when we leave and before we take another step I have to put-on on a fleecy vest, beanie, gloves and neck scarf. It’s 5°C with no sun over the mountains yet. It’s a magnificent clear day but so cold. It only takes an hour of uphill hiking to warm up and now we’re in the sun, it’s almost hot and we have to stop to strip off again. The track is steep and gets steeper but three hours later at 11am we’re at Col Pinter at 2,777 metres, a climb of almost 1,100 metres from Alpenzu. It’s cold at the top with a chill wind, but there’s a little nook in the sun out of the breeze where we have a hot coffee and some left over tart from somewhere I don’t know where. Whenever we have tart for s=dessert, we’re usually full, so we keep the tart for morning tea one day sometime later.
The down hill descent is steep, then flattens out, then steep steep steep. We’ve met quite a few day hikers on the track coming up from the Champoluc side, including a large group of high school students with a guid at the front and rear. Most kids appear to be enjoying it, but some kids look as though they would rather be somewhere else. Eventually at 1.30pm, after 2 hrs of steep down hill, we reach Vieux Crest, a ski terminal 400 metres above Champoluc and find a bench seat to have lunch of cheese from Ober Loo, which we bought yesterday, on broken toasted crackers.
We’ve veered off track, but follow different signs to Champoluc. We can’t go wrong whichever way we go. Champoluc is at the bottom of the valley. It takes an hour to descend and at 3pm we’re at the Hotel L’Aiglon almost in the centre of the village. The room is nice with a balcony, so first up is the washing, then a shower before answering lots of emails confirming future reservations.
It’s 5pm when we wander through the pretty village past flower boxes lining the streets, looking for a supermarket. We find Crai’s, it seems to be the most popular, for mace, mayonnaise, bread, and band aids, but then go back to a specialty Panetteria where we buy dried meats, blue vein brie, and a whole apple strudel - for morning teas, and two large cold beers with the lids flipped by the helpful attendant. Then back to out room to spread out our picnic on a towel on the desk/table/. The bread is the nicest we’ve had in Italy so far - well not since we were in Gressoney La Trinite 8 years ago when a fox stole our food from Alpenzu. This bread a very soft cereal bread with a light crust, not your typical Italian bread.
It’s so quiet with no traffic on the paved streets and after dinner we’re catching up on photos and blogs before bed at 9am. We don’t need an alarm to get up in the morning as it’s a short day of 8k, we hope about 3hrs, and we plan to leave about lunch time.