Wow! What a day. We got up and out the door at 8:30 and started in stage 2 of the tour:

http://montblanctreks.com.au/stage-2-les-contamines-les-chapieux/

Beautiful start of the day. Weather report said maybe a little rain at noon but it said the same yesterday and no rain. Off we went. Stopped at a famous church of Norte Dame De La Gorge, along the way. Very nice.

Today is going to be tough. 1300 meters in elevation rise , about 5000 feet. The guide said about 5 ½ hours. We knew what was coming. We are slow walkers. We are learning that if the guide says 2 hours it’s 3 hours for us. So today should be about 8+ hours. Slow and steady. That’s us. Everything was fine until about 1500 meters. We stopped for a nice lunch of cheese, bread, Apple and water. That was at noon. We still had a 1000 meters to go. The trail started getting serious. Steep, narrow.

We plugged on. Around 2:00 we were overtaken by a group from Singapore. One commented how lucky we were to have no rain. You guessed it 6 minutes later rain. It will stop soon, we thought so we didn’t put on our Frog Togg poncho. Yup rain continued. Now we are wet trying to put them back on for the first time. We did. Did it ever rain.

Now we are wet. Walking in the rain. Ok but it’s fairly warm. We will be fine. As we pass through 6000 ft and then 7000 ft it starts getting cold but the rain stops and we enjoy the cool crisp air as we are hiking over rough terrain. Did I say that I’m having trouble finding the trail?

Rain again. Now it’s cold and wet at elevation. What’s the worry? hypothermia. Get covered and keep walking. We get to the first Pass at about 2300 meters. There is a storm shelter there. Missy rightly asks “ should we stop”. No! Keep moving. “ hypothermia. Guide book says 50 minutes = 1.5 hours+ for us to our destination. Off we go. Missy is great. Determined.

Again I keep losing the trail. I know the direction but it’s annoying. The terrain is mainly rocks and dangerous as the day is getting long. We see the Pass. It looks a long ways away. It is.

After some steep, slippery, narrow trails. We get to the Pass but wait the name on a sign of the Refuge ( mountain hut) is not the one we booked and reservations are tight. I don’t tell Missy. Keep moving. We make it to the Pass and a different sign with the name of our Refuge(Ref de la croix Du Bonhomme- which means: refuge of the cross of the snowman) is there. Now we can celebrate. We made it Yay!

5 minute walk to the Refuge. We check- in they have our reservations. At Refuges you take off your boots and leave outside. We are shown our bunk beds. Six people to a room. Fortunately two other couples. Everyone very respectful and considerate. Dinner starts with a bean soup and bread. Followed by beef stew and polenta. Really good. Some chocolate cake. Good conversation with table mates from France, England and Malta. Then to bed.
The Refuge holds up to 120 hikers. Bunk beds with rooms holding different numbers of people. Solar hot water for shower which was fine. Solar powered batteries to light the place. Lighting is limited but adequate. I have some cell service. At 8000 feet. Amazing!!!

Breakfast is served at 7. Almost everyone was in the dining room already some ready to head out. Our dining tables were assigned so more conversation and exchange of contact info with our new friends from Malta. Breakfast was bread, butter, bitter orange marmalade🤗, honey (all home made) and of course hot yummy coffee.

We pack our bags, study our trek and head out at 9. The next stop at La Chpieux was a steep decent of 900 meters. The views were majestic, the trail went through streams of water and had several varieties of terrain. Our toes were in great pain but we kept on going down. We met people from Ireland and Denmark and France along the way. We reached our destination, end of stage 2 at 2pm. We could not get a room there so we got a taxi to take us to the nearest town, Bourg-Saint Maurice, got a room in a cozy hotel were we had hot shower and Wifi. Our journey continues. 🤗🤗

We took about 200 photos. We will post a few as soon as we have better Wifi.

photos: 1. First 500 meter climb 2. Beautiful views 3. Photo taken by our Singaporian trail-mates at 1800m 4. At the top of the first pass at 2300m 5. Our night’s refuge🤓🤓6. From refuge Les Chapieux