The headline pertains to my first trip to Europe where I came home with a few pictures of cows back in the day when you paid to develop film. My Mom looked at my pictures and explained that we had cows 30 'minutes north at farms so she did not understand why I took pictures of cows. I explained that they were different. Today we had lots of animal adventures.
The hike today was up to 6,500 foot, up a long steep trail, down an even steeper one where the name of the game was not to fall, then up a shorter trail, along a pass and back down into Les Comtaines. That was the morning description. The morning started with another cable car ride up a mountain to a mini-ski resort. Once again, the views of the moutains were breathtaking. The trail started out literally on the side of a mountain, walking along a narrow path next to a steep drop. This one did not totally freak me out because you would roll in lots of pretty flowers if you fell over the cliff so I figured I would not fall too far. A couple times we had tiny scrambles where if you did not want to scramble you could hold onto the rope welded to the rocks.
At the end of the trail we came to the edge of a glacier. As spectacular as glaciers look on television, one that has done nothing lately but recede is really a pile of filthy ice at its base. This one also had a large lake of less than clean water so we needed to go to the edge ( yep, just like children) and play with it. I say play "with it" because it was covered with a thin sheet of ice from which we broke off pieces and tried to break them apart on the ice to see who could throw the farthest! Age range between 28 and 75 and this is who we spent our morning until our guide yelled at us.
As a retreating glacier leaves behind boulders, I decided to make a bathroom stop behind one before catching up with the group.
The next climb was really tough, without switchbacks and very steep but the mountain views were spectacular and at the top we were greeted with some sheep who patiently posed for photos. At one point we ran into a world class fell runner, headed in the opposite direction and preparing for the big race here later this month. They run the trail we are taking 11 days to hike. One in our party recognized him from
his recent cover appearance on a US magazine. We thought the climb was tough but it was easy compared to the descent.
The trail down was better than an hour's decent, over a rocky path which required concentration to keep from falling. If you fell at various points in the path, you got a bit wet, so there was an incentive to concentrate hard. I took one slide, onto my hynie, bad enough for others to check on my knee but I am an old hand at hynie slides and my new poles helped steady much of the descent.
We could see where we were headed, a house with a large meadow. It had a public toilet where you stand to use. Yuck! I had forgotten those existed here in Europe. We all sat down at the meadow for lunch-another local cheese sandwich on real French bread for me and a small herd of mountain horses came over.
They have shorter legs than standard horses with the result that they are not that much taller than I. A couple were really aggressive, wanting to know what we had for lunch. One from our group stood up and waved and flanged his poles. We laughed and he said that as a former principal it was just like breaking up a group of pre-teen boys. That worked, for about three minutes. At one point I stood up and tried pushing one away. I am told there are some funny pictures of my losing the battle.
After lunch we had a shorter 30 minute hike up a hill where we found our Swiss cows with bells on them. Mommy was right, besides the bells, they are just plain dairy cows. They are milked in the field which is different and we saw the farmer arrive with the large milk vat as we started our descent.
The long descent filled with time to look at butterflies and colorful wildflowers as the trail was much friendlier. We detoured to a forest trail briefly for some respit from the hot sun.
First real hard day, legs were fine, felt a bit of the altitude at the highest elevations. Tomorrow includes a four hour ascent, 4,000 feet.
Hi Ali and Katie! Miss our weekly YMCA chats but think I am getting a workout here!
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