Tour du Mont Blanc: Les Houches to La Flégère

Our morning began with the hotel breakfast buffet.  One must always begin a trip to France with un pain au chocolat, right?  That must be a rule or something.

When planning our trip, we were advised to get the Tour of Mt Blanc guidebook (Thanks Meg!) that practically eliminated the planning and research portion of our trip.  I just verified some phone numbers and everything was set.  Although the book warned our choice of starting points was one of the most difficult stages, it worked out best logistically (we began on day #8 of the clockwise option).

Just as promised, we were barely out of the hotel door when the steep climbing began.  With the damp ground and air left over from the night's rain, it felt a little bit like running at home.  We even saw some slugs that threaten to eat our garden (they are native here and invasive in California).  Sweat poured from everywhere and I strangely enjoyed the drop of sweat that continuously formed on the tip of my chin and splashed onto the trail.  I hadn't sweat this intensely in a long time!

Our first encounter with snow was at about 2,000m (6,561 ft.) and was thankfully brief.  Clouds had lingered all morning and swallowed us and the now alpine trail.  As I read the trail description to Matt, I read "Your work will be rewarded by uninterrupted views of.." and paused to turn the page.  He interrupted by blurting out  "FOG".  Yup, pretty much.  It wasn't until Brévent, and our day's high point, that we'd catch a brief glimpse of parts of Mt Blanc that the book promised.

We came across several large groups of people, the most notable a group of very fit senior hikers.  When we caught up to them and allowed them to pass on a wide, steep part of trail, they broke into chattery commentary.  "Look at them, the young people.  Oh, to be young again.  Enjoy it while you've got it, kids!" they joked.  I was impressed that they navigated this steep trail with such ease.  It was no joke.

The trail eventually leveled out a bit and we followed it to Le Brévent cable car.  The clouds parted enough to get teaser views in all directions.  We also encountered our first cluster of Ibex, a type of mountain goat.  The great alpine valley was full of contrasting colors of melting seasonal snow, ice fields, and brown vegetation just emerging from the snow.

Approaching our summit well above 2,500m (8,202 ft.), the snow became difficult when we lost the trail.  Since there was a nearby cable car station, many trails were from people that took the tram and the snowy footprints often led us nowhere and then turned back.  This portion of the TMB opened up within the last few days and hadn't had traffic at all.  Normally, it isn't a big deal, but after an impeccably marked trail, it threw us off a little bit.

We stopped for a hot chocolate at the top and then began picking our way through the false trails off the mountain.  Every option was a scary sort of steep, especially going down.  Hopefully I get over this fear, or it will be a very long trip.  Boulders at the bottom of these slopes made the idea of a glissade less fun.

We continued down, hanging out with more Ibex, these threatened by our presence and snorted high pitched squeals at us as we passed by on THEIR hillside.

 

The trail moved down gently after a while and we got in a bit more running for the day.  The trail was mostly too steep until this point.  We caught glimpses of Chamonix, some 2,000m below.  It is much larger than our town and we marveled at how the people squeezed their homes into the valley or scattered up the steep mountain slopes.  Two great glaciers spilled a brilliant blue hue from the summit of Mt. Blanc.

 At last, we arrived at our home for the night, la Flégère refuge.  An old ski auberge for the nearby cable car and ski hill, the ancient building was wonderfully kept up.  We were shown to our room, a small area on the top floor dormitory, but out of the way from most of the other beds.  Thankfully, the refuge wasn't full and we had the area all to ourselves.

17km (10.5 mi.)
1546m (5,072 ft.) gain
772 m (2,532 ft.) loss