June 2016

Today was a beast! I thought I would add in some extra mileage by taking the longer tougher variant called the 5b through Italy to make up for some of the distance I lost by skipping the Col du pallet! So I climbed a mighty 2200 metres over four different steep Cols over 41k! It […]

Up at 5.30 and the lovely folks at the refuge de plan sec had left out an early breakfast for me.    It is a fairly repetitive routine when through hiking!  Get up, eat, down as much coffee as you can and get walking within 30 minutes of waking.  The first hour or two of

Another amazing day in the mountains!  Up at 5.30 for apple cake, cereal and coffee strong enough to put hairs on my chest!   A lovely walk down the valley to the refuge entre deux eaux, through a bit of snow but not much!  Then I headed up the hill traversing a series of tricky

Today was an excellent lesson in going with the flow!   So, I was planning to traverse the Crete des Gittes – a high exposed ridge – but it was covered in clouds!  So I sensibly descended to Chapieux through the most and walked into the nearest main town by road (a boring 15km).  I

So, today was a happy day!  The gr5 trail intersects with the deservedly famous TMB trail for the duration of my day.  So while I had to endure lots of sunburnt people walking slowly with heavy packs, they had conveniently left me lots of tracks to follow through the snow!!!    I walked from Les

So today was not my day!  Snow – my nemesis – almost got the better of me!  More on that later….. But first  – a beautiful start to the day in Samoens, with a beautiful river walk up to the Gorge du Tines which was stunning with the sun coming up through the trees  The

It was always going to be a long day – 46k, more than 2000m of climbing and a guide book estimate of 14.5 hours of non stop walking.  I was (overly) confident I could do it in much less.   On the bright side it was a stunning stunning day in the Alps!  Total perfection.