We woke up Saturday morning to wonderful sunshine and as we hiked out from the hotel, we realized we were surrounded by many native Courmayeur citizens. All families out with lots of children. The youngest we saw was a four year old girl with the sturdiest legs you have ever seen and a mini hiking pole that fit her perfectly. She was all dressed in pink.
We headed up the steepest forest trail I have ever seen and as it was hot, at one point we begged for a water stop. Our guide told us to wait until the trail was more stable-remember this sentence for later.....
When we reached the first summit, we were rewarded with a breathtaking view of the Italian side of Mount Blanc. We pretty much instantly forgot the pain of the climb as the view was so incredible. There also was a gourmet restaurant at this summit and that was the goal of most of the locals.
As we continued to hike, some of the trail had a very steep drop - our 2nd guide was kind enough to take a 10:00 walking position in front of me so that I didn't freak out at the 500 foot drop. This region of France has an evergreen tree where there base grows out of the ground like a backwards J. We found a 300 year old specimen and while most of us just touched it for luck - one of our guides was kind enough to hug it for me.
We continued on climbing and were greeted with a view of the back side of Mount Blanc and the surrounding mountains from the French border through to the Swiss.
This picture looks back over the boarder into France.
We sat down for lunch about halfway through and just stared at the beauty.
Lunch was a very long one and included some napping in the warm sun. All afternoon we continued along the mountain balcony and stopped repeatedly for pictures.
Finally we arrived in our hut but not before my foot missed the trail and I face planted, right on my nose and hard enough to cause Chris and Sue to run to me to make sure I was not badly hurt. Everything hurt last night but thanks to Aleve and some homeopathic medicine from our guides, I will live.
The hut was a bit better than I expected. It is named after Walter Bonatti who is a famous mountaineer. The view was pretty awesome.
We were led to a bunk room where all 14 of us were to sleep for e night and we all got 2.5 minutes of hot water for a shower. Besides that, it was pretty nice although I am relatively sure the Defense Dept could create weapons of mass destruction from the stench coming from the boot room. The boot room had better than 50 pairs of boots in it.
Dinner included an incredibly soup where you put fontina cheese in the bottom of the bowl, filled the bowl with vegetable soup and put croutons on top. It was awesomely good.
After dinner I learned how to play farkel, a dice game I was pretty good at and then the crazies, myself included, decided to go for a nighttime hike. Thankfully half the group came to our sense after 10 minutes on the trail and turned back. The others, included 3 drunk boys and one guide, did not return for two hours. They admitted this morning that they did not see anything we did not.
Despite the communal room, I slept rather soundly because we all had a 7 am breakfast call this morning.
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