We needed to spend the night in Bourg-Saint Mauriceas since there were no beds in Les Chapieux. A 60 Euro taxi ride got us there. We found a pleasant hotel and had a good nights rest. We had a leisurely morning, had a nice lunch at a café by the side of the road. Back to our hotel to pick up our packs. A 60 Euro taxi ride got us to Refuge du Mottes. We decided to hop ahead about 3k bypassing Les Chapieux the actual start of Stage 3 as its not that interesting. The Refuge was real nice and modern. . We were able to get a room for two. The dormitory really packs them in and the toilet/shower complex requires going outside to another building. A four share is same size room as our two share.. So far neither of the two huts we have stayed in have been heated. Plenty of blankets available. Guessing 50 degrees tonight.

We had a nice (very small) private room with shared bathrooms/showers (all quite tight.)
We had coffee and a wonderful blueberry cake, visited with two nice chaps from UK and had elevated conversation about the state of the world.

Dinner was served in a very cozy dining room. We conversed with a couple of young chemical engineering PhD candidates from Yale. Dinner of a vegetable soup, homemade bread, stew and polenta (or rice) and a flan like desert was wonderful. Breakfast was served at 6:30-7:00

We headed out at 7:34 to complete stage 3. Next stop, Rifugio Elizabetta.

The hike was pretty easy even though we climbed from ~1800m to ~2500m and descended
to 1800m again.

Great feeling to stand on the top of the mountain at 2500m on the boarder of France and Italy with the panoramic view of mountains, some still covered with piles of snow.

A couple of hours later we arrived at the the refuge sitting way above a beautiful valley. We were assigned beds in a dorm with three levels and 15 beds on each level. Each bed space the width of a sleeping bag. Once again we got lucky and were moved to the two spaces on the end but luckier when we were told that we could have a private room ( about 6×8 feet) with a bunk bed. Yay🤗🤗

We had the whole afternoon so we visited with a lot of people from Idaho, Vancouver, Scotland and Japan. Dinner was great (some kind of thick rice and veggie soup, pork with squash dressing, Green beans and roasted potatoes and a light flan for desert.

We start our stage 4 tomorrow🤓🤓

photos:1-  memorial for a WW2 American bomber whose plane crashed a few feet from this spot. 2. Dining room at Refuge de Mottes. 3. Panaramic view of the refuge in early morning. 4. View along the way from the refuge to the summit. 5.  Photo of us taken by a nice hiker. 6. Missy all excited at 2500m summit (boarder if Italy and France 6. Our photo by another nice hiker at the summit. 7. Rifugio Elisabetta. 8. View from the refuge’s sunny deck