We left about 9:15 and it was a fairly easy 13 kilometer hike today. It was 7.5 kilometers, and a 2.25 hour downhill walk from Champex to Sembrancher and then a 5.5 kilometer, 1.5 hour slightly uphill walk from Sambrancher to Le Chable.
We went down about 2,500 feet today and only back up just over 300 feet so our elevation is now at about 2,700 feet (about 1,500 feet lower than when we started our hike in Trient yesterday). All that up yesterday to end up lower today, and now we have another big up tomorrow - 5,637 feet. It won't be as bad as yesterday because the elevation gain is spread over 9 kilometeres, but it will be a constant uphill the entire day.
Our big concern today was where to get money, because neither of us had a lot of Swiss francs and the guest houses and hostels prefer cash to credit cards. We got to Sembrancher at 11:30 to find that the bank is closed from 11AM to 2PM. We thought we might have to take a train from Le Chable to a bigger town if Le Chable didn't have a bank, but luckily it did. You just never know with these little towns. The book said Champex had a bank but it didn't.
So after we got money from the ATM, we went in search of a room or dormitory bed. The only pensionne in town had closed and there were no inexpensive dormitory beds in any of the hotels. We finally settled on a room with no private bathroom and no breakfast for 80 Swiss francs. At 40 Swiss francs (about US$30) each it cost us a lot more than we are used to paying. To save money we decided we would use our esbit stove to cook stuffing and canned chicken for dinner. We have a big stone outside our window sill on which we will cook. We also got towels with the room, so we took showers (even though we were hardly dirty, after all we both took a shower last night) and then washed clothes on the sink in our room. It was nice to have a towel to wring out the clothes with, so they dry much faster. I rigged up a clothes line near the window and hung up the clothes to dry. I took a picture from the street of the hotel room with our clothes hanging in the window. We sure know how to bring down the class of a place.
We took a short nap and then walked to the grocery store fror lunch stuff and snacks and I got a couple of beers. We are staying in a refuge (a mountain hut) tomorrow night, so we called to make reservations. Shari said the man who answered the phone didn't speak much English, but he said no problem when she asked about reservations for tomorrow night. I certainly don't speak much French but I do okay with the little I remember from high school and I'm pretty good at understanding people even when they speak to me in very accented English.
We cooked dinner and then went for about a 45 minute walk up the hill towards where we will go tomorrow. I was tired, so I fell asleep about 9:30.
9/04: It was a beautiful weather today, the views were spectacular, the trail was lovely, but it was very very tiring anf difficult day for me. We started out at 7:30 but we got off track a bit near the beginning and had to back track so we lost about a half hour. We started up on the right path from a little above town at 8:20 and we got to the refuge at 3PM, only stopping twice for some food for about 15 minutes each time.
My legs were sore today which is unusual for me because my legs are very strong. I think it is just an accumulated muscle fatigue due to mutliple days of hiking. I surely felt that almost 5,400 feet of elevation gain today, but I tried to enjoy the views in spite of my discomfort.
We are at Cabane du Mont Fort at 2,457 meters (8,061 feet) and it has spectacular views all around it. It is a nicely built, quite large mountain hut that serves food, and has dormitory beds and rooms with 2 beds in them. The fellow that was manning the hut when we got here didn't speak English and he seemed annoyed that we didn't speak French. He wasn't very friendly, but we got our point accross that we wanted 2 beds, dinner and breakfast.
I ate a tuna sandwich as soon as we got here and then I laid down because I was freezing (which happens when I am very tired). We got up for dinner about 6:20, ate right at 6:30 and I went to bed about 8:30, after watching the sun set. Dinner was good - soup, salad, spaghetti bolognese and chocolate pudding. There was a different person manning the hut at dinner time who was much nicer than the other fellow. There were only a few other people eating dinner and staying at the hut - 3 men from Northern Ireland and 3 French-speaking women.
9/05: Breakfast was nothing special - just bread, butter, jam and coffee. We started out about 8:15 along with the 3 men and 3 women. The men took a different route, and the 3 French women were ahead of us most of the day. We went up over a steep pass that was quite taxing for the last hour up (climbing over boulders), and it was very steep (but fairly short) on the way down. It certainly got my adrenaline going.
We got to a trail junction about 11:15 and spent about 45 minutes trying to figure out which way to go. We eventually went the way the other women went and we met up with the Irish guys along the way. When we got to the top of the pass the 3 women were there having lunch.
None of us expected it to take so long to get to the hut today. We all hiked on and off together throughout the afternoon and Shari, Lynn and I arrived at the hut first at 5:30PM, followed by Rita, Marion and John. George and Brian didn't arrive until 6:30. It just started to rain lightly as we got to the hut and it is supposed to be bad weather (rain or snow, depending on the elevation) tomorrow.
We did get to see some chamois (a deer type animal with small curving horns) and ibex (like chamois but with a stockier body and scimitar-shaped horns marked with a series of knobbles), along the way today and I took a few pictures of them. We also heard the marmots whistling, but I never saw any of them.
Today was a very grueling day. It was only 10 kilometers but we crossed 3 passes and reached a height of 2,965 meters (9,725 feet) on one of them. Each time I thought we were done climbing up, we had more ascent to do and a few of the downs today were very steep and quite scary. I hate getting scared on the downs because I'm afraid it will make it even more difficult to hike down.
We had a wonderful dinner tonight at the hut, the Cabine de Prafleuri. The only trouble was we were assigned our seating, and Shari and I sat with a non-English speaking couple. I had hoped we would sit with the French women. Both Rita and Lynn speak English (actually, Lynn grew up in England and Rita in Holland, but they both married Frenchmen), and we had talked to them for a while before dinner and they are really interesting women.
Shari and I are in a 7-bed dorm room tonight. There is one set of bunk beds (that were taken when we got here) and a group of 5 matresse all right next to each other. Not my favorite way of sleeping. The bathroom (there is only one) is also interesting. It has 2 shower stalls (you have to pay extra for a shower), 2 toilet stalls, 2 long trough sinks with 4 sets of faucets, and 2 urinals. The urinals are just out in the open along side the sinks. That's it - men and women together. I told John (one of the Irish guys) that I'd just close my eyes if I walked in when he was usuing the urinal. I've been in European (especially French) communal bathrooms before, but never with open urinals. Oh well, there's always a first time for everything.
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