The Road Goes Ever On: Tour Du Mont Blanc, 4

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Tour Du Mont Blanc, 4

And now, the exciting conclusion of "Tour Du Mont Blanc":

On the Bovine variant, the ugly city of Martigny, far, far below

Along the trail to Bovine; all through our trek, the alpine
wildflowers were everywhere, particularly the alpine azaleas
(alas, Vicki had the camera that day)

It gets to be a long story here; after Bovine, and en route

to the Col de la Forclaz, it started raining; heavy rain; we

made it to the campground at the Col de la Forclaz, where a

French couple from Lyons we had been leap-frogging

(nyuk, nyuk, nuyk) helped us tent and shared their hot

water (for our backapacka dinner); the next morning, with

heavy rain predicted the next several days, they helped us

find the train back to France, and then on to Les Houches,

where we dried out in a nice little hotel; the next morning
we breakfasted on our bilberries and other goodies; we
would run into our Lyons friends another time, days later
and return the favors; "kindness of strangers" is truly one
of the best parts of travel

Back in the Valley of Chamonix; so from Les Houches we
trained back to the campground in Chamonix, established
a camp there and deposited our stuff, and rode back up
the valley to cover some of the ground we had missed; at
this point, we were beginning to ask ourselves "wait a
second, isn't this supposed to be a vacation?!"

The Great White Mountain

Chamonix from Plan Praz; piecing together parts we had
missed, we rode up to La Flegere and walked to Plan Praz;
and then rode the cable-car up to Brevent; we left the great
descent from Brevent to Les Houches for another year...