From the Exodus itinerary: Follow river La Drance; climb to the highest point of the tour at
Grand Col Ferret and into Italy. Overnight at La Palud.
Still following the same valley and the river 'La Drance', we climb to the 'Grand Col Ferret' (2537m – 8320ft), the highest pass of the tour. Now in Italy, the valley is also called 'Val Ferret'. The mountain views from the Col are stunning with the Grandes Jorasses dominating the scene. We walk down the valley to Arp Nouva (1770m – 5800ft) then travel by bus to our hotel in La Palud near Courmayeur. (BLD)7 hours walking, 970m - 3180ft up, 800m – 2600ft down. The actual miles/elevation gain tracked:
10.7 miles and 3041 elevation increase.
The morning had a very soft sunrise to start our day.
I was anticipating today's elevation gain as we were scheduled to reach the highest elevation for the trek. In actuality it was a very nice hike - yes, the hike up was a bit challenging, but in alignment with my training. The weather is wonderful and clear - I didn't pack enough short sleeve shirts and am having to wash my shirt every night. We started with a mild uphill along a road out of town, before losing the paved road and starting a gravel road through a valley and then onto a steeper unpaved trail.
As we walk up the valley, Shaun continues to look upward to see if he can find any ibex. We stop at a coffee shop about a third of the way up the route to the Grand Col ( La Paule?) and they serve a wonderful apple tart. The coffee is getting stronger as we get closer to Italy.
As we get closer to the Grand Col the wind kicks up and we put on most everything we own as we reach the top. This is the border between Switzerland and Italy and where we stop for lunch and the beautiful view. There's also a herd of sheep that comes through. They even walk along the downward trail for a short while before the sheep dogs drive them on and down the valley.
On the way down, we see our first bicycles. A very thin walking trail makes sharing with bicycles rather challenging. We see poor slobs carrying their cycles up to the top and this uphill is more challenging that the one we walked. Glad I didn't have to carry anything much on the easier side.
Along the way down we see some orchids near where we take a rest half way down. At the bottom of the hill is another place for a snack, our first in Italy, called Refugio Elena.
As we reach the bottom Shaun tells us we have about 10 minutes to catch the bus, so Sue leads the race to make the bus. We get down to the bus stop and remember that in Italy we need to wear a mask on the bus. We take the bus to our stay at the Hotel Astoria in La Palud. Next to our hotel is a pizza place which looked interesting and smells really good.
Our room looks very nice in comparison with others (not as nice as the Splendide). There is a wrap around balcony and a nice view of the mountains and an expressway. The expressway seems to have a lot of trucks backed up - traffic going through the tunnels has to be spaced for safety, for access in case of fire or accident.
As we come into the hotel, the luggage has arrived, but it somehow looks less than normal. It turns out the luggage from the Edelweiss Hotel didn’t get collected and won't arrive before 6pm tomorrow. Amongst other issues, they have no clean clothes or toiletries and tomorrow is a day off when Karrie and Jo need their bathing suits. The rest is what complaint emails are made of, so won't recreate the text here. Suffice to say there were some very unhappy clients.
I just want to call out a really helpful guy working at the hotel - Enio. He helped everyone and made the stay wonderful. It was through him I figured out how to get to where we needed to be tomorrow. Unfortunately, I don't have his picture.
Before dinner Lisa and I were trying to get to a market, but the walk was too long and we gave up. Along the way we spoke with other Americans doing the TMB and they recommended the pizza place. We decided to go there for dinner tomorrow and made a reservation.
Dinner was across the street (where we saw the other Americans) and the menu was gnocchi with bolognese sauce, polenta with sausage and fruit salad. Not the tastiest of dinners, but very filling. We were all ready for our day off tomorrow!
We have an interesting experience when Lisa hears men walking along the balcony after we're in bed. The balcony door gets closed quickly!
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