Alpwalk

Walks and hikes in Europe and California, posted sporadically as they happen… or as I reflect on them…

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Alpwalk 11: Rosuel to Col -du-Palet

 
Refuge du Col-du-Palet, July 13, 2016--


I WOKE UP a little after six and looked through the window above the foot of my bed: a grey morning, but not raining. The firs are grey against a grey sky.

We eat the usual refuge breakfast; then pack up and sack up and out the door, 8:20 am.  We are in the valley floor of a national park, the Parc du Vanoise, and at first the trail is manicured, ascending gently on dirt, grass, and occasionally gravel paths, often signposted, with a "nature path" branching off at one point, for those who want placards explaining the ggeology, flora, and fauna.

I am often among those people, but not on this trip: there's no time, and besides I am with three others, and aware of their interests. But mostly there's no time: je mefie les temps, I don't trust this weather. It could begin to rain at any moment. In fact, I've left the rain cover on my backpack.

The last ttime I walked this stage, eight years ago, it took me six hours. Of course we'd started off from Rosuel at one in the afternoon, having climbed up there from Landry, 800 meters lower, and having stopped at Rosuel for lunch. I didn't take that into consideration: I'm eight years older, and slower on the ascents; this is likely to take at least six hours, and who knows what the weather will be. Clouds and mists ccontinually blow through the gaps in the mountains on either side.
 We begin in open fields, aware of the rush of water; the Ponturin torrent on our left fed, partly, by three waterfalls chuting down the opposite wall of this valley.
 

Looking back toward Rosuel
Soon we are in forest, close and comforting, mostly larch trees around us. Our path is packed dirt fleckeed with stones, mostly about the size of my foot, sometimes larger. Kees is usually ahead, and occasionally waits for us; Curt goes next, then either Jim or me. I find the altitude increasingly problematic when climbing like this.
 


 
From the forest we emerge into open country, much of itt covered with vegetation — there has been no grazing here just yet. At one point Kees points out some sorrel: Chew a leaf of this, he says; it counters thirst. I try it: he's right.

We cross the Ponturin on a wooden footbridge. Around us fairly large stones and boulders lie scattered; limestone brought by glacier down from higher nearby mountaiins. We are climbiing a seris of four or five huge steps, plans or "flats" of rubble, I suppose, left by successive glaciations, converted over the millenia into flat alpages: rock, gravel, soil, grasses, flowers. 
 
You walk fairly easily across one of these plans, occasionally negotiating marshy areas or stepping across freshets; then you climb a hundred meters or more on a stony dirt trail, often worn so deep you have trouble moving one shoe past the other, to the next.

At a certain point we pass a stone chalet. A sign over the door warns that it is private, and a function, somehow, of the Park. The top half of a Dutch door is open, and a discreet glance inside reveals a nicely made-up interior. Walking past we meet a middle-aged woman sitting in the sun, now, on a stone wall; clearly she lives here. 
 
And nearby there are milk-cows: first one with a six-month-old bull calf; then five or six more; then, in the distance, a herd of eighty or so, and a man walking with two border collies and a white dog that may be an Australian mix. And two grey donkeys among them, with their characteristic shoulder stripes.
 
We're in rhododendron country now. At first we see isolated plants blooming bravely against rock or grass; then there's a whole hillside, the sun suddenly opening clouds to shine through them for just a moment. And then you see the entire slope is covered with them, the bushes almost knee-high, all of them in luxurious bloom, surely half a mile of rhododendrons cascading down the hillside.

But by now we've climbed only halfway to the col; it's gettting chilly; I'm getting hungry and thinking about the "picnic" lunch the Refuge de Rosuel had sold me. A while back I stopped long enough to put my sack rain cover away, stowing things properly in my backpack and making my waterbottle accessible; but I don't think it advisable to stop any more; I don't trust the weather; there are surely snow patches ahead to negotiate.; and before them there are tricky water-crossings to manage.
 
We continue to cllimb. A refuge, Entre-le-Lac, is visible below us, next to a good-sized grey-green lake. We pass another private chalet, no more than sixteen feet square, with a covered area like a low carport (though no car could drive up here!) bearing a sign inviting ramblers to take refuge in case of bad weather but respect the property please.

We cotinue to walk uphill, more gradually now, throughh a defile I suppose you would call it, the Plan de la Grassaz. But we are higher and snow lies on the ground, covering the trail at times, sometimes only a short way, sometimes up to eighty paces. And the paces are short: left right left right the boot drives into the snow to anchor you against falling to the side, in which case you risk a glissade sliding down the slope, inevvitably into often sharp rock. 
 
We notice a sign noting our refuge is twenty minutes away. This cannot be true; it's only a little past noon. But after negotiating a couple more snow patches there it is, a familiar roofline, and the welcoming refuge. We take off our packs, lean sticks against yhe wall, and enter a snug dining room, six tables each seating eight, a small stove in one corner, a kitchen beyond. 

I want only a bottle or two of carbonated water, which they make on site from the fine glacial water of the area. We lay our sheets out in the dortoir in an adjacent building. Though its snug in the dining room, it's just above freezing outside.

July 13, 2016: 12 km; 1000 m; 4:10.

Alpwalk 10: to Rosuel

Refuge-Porte de Rosuel, July 12, 2016—
 
Looking downvalley west from the refuge Rosuel

A VERY SHORT DAY today, partly to get back into the swing, partly to avoid bad weather, as rain and even thunderstorm was expected in the afternoon. We had our hotel breakfast (orange juice, café au lait, little croissants, granolla) and then, in a gentle drizzle, walked down to the taxi rank at the train station where we found M. le Norman, who'd driven us to dinner the previous night. He took us up to le Moulin, where we'd stayed a few nights ago.

There we shouldered our packs, already shrouded in their rain jackets, and hit the trail, crossing the nant Ponturin, which was of course running pretty fast, and taking a dirt path uphill.

The path soon turned into a somewhat stony dirt mule-path, always under spruces and firs, which broke the gentle rain so that I hardly noticed it under my straw hat. I was wearing my usual costume: long-sleeved hiking shirt, trousers, boots. I wear that no matter the weather, almost never adding jacket or shell or rain pants.)

At Nancroiix, unfortunately, further progress on the GR5 was barred: apparently rockfalls or sliides had made the way dangerouus. We had to cross the nant again, I think on the "Pont Romano," and take the paved road through Nancroix. This was a great pity, as it meant we'd miss the Palais des Mines, the beautiful stone college of mining set up in Napoleonic times; I particularly wanted to show it to the others.

Also we were now out in the open and the rain had increased. I put on my nylon shell, ignoring its hood, and we continued, first on D87, then, at a small ccollection of recreational buildings (café, equitation, gîte) on a dirt road. At les Bettières the dirt road had begun to give way at a bridge footing, and a back-hoe was moving big rocks into place to remedy the situatiionn.

From there we followed a grassy track which almost immediately brought us to our nght's refuge, Rosuel, in an interesting building designed to shed avalanches. (A refuge on the site had previously been destroyed in one.) 

Walking today: four miles, 250 m↑, 1:30. Hardly counts. 

Sunday, July 10, 2016

Alpwalk 4: Chésery to Samoëns

 

The Montagne de l'Huber, at Chésery
We left our Swiss refuge a little after seven, after a reasonably good coffee-milk-and-bread breakfast, climbed a little around the nearby lake to the col des Portes-de-l'Hiver, and then started the long descent through pastures, on dirt trails and country roads, in country I find a little too bucolic. Of course the country is Switzerland and the local industry is dairying, and I am fond of the Brown Swiss breed, which replaces the Abondance here. 

The pastures are almost lawns, with few of the flowers so abundant in the Abondance and Beaufortain on the French side; the road laces through them; there are neat farmsteads scattered along the route, some of them offering boissons and liight refreshment. 
 
And there is always the view of the distant crests — well, not all that distant; and one of them will inevitably have to be crossed for us to get back to France. 

Then I was in unfamiliar territory. Eight years ago I left the GR5 at just that point, descending to a hotel at Mines d'Or for the night, then taking the road (and to be honest thumbing a ride) into Samoëns. That was not today's plan. We were sticing to the GR5.

This turned out to lead us down into a very pleasant valley where we fond a refuge, Chardonniere, which offered a fine salade forestiere. This braced us for what turned out to be a tedious descent via hairpins, often on asphalt road, sometimes past amazing formations of shale; and then into the night's lodgings in Samoëns. 
 
Once again we were in a hotel, the three of us sharing a room. A hot shower and a real bed!

Alpwalk 7: Bonhomme to Plan-Mya

Gite du Plan-Mya, July 8, 2016—
 
Crete des Gittes

We were up early for breakfast, which could have been considerably better, and set off for the day's destination, the Refuge du Balme — unaware there would be a change of plans.

The first thing on the GR5, leaving Bonhomme, is the amazing Crete des Gittes, which describes a long gentle arc swinging from southerly to westerly (as you walk in the direction we go, always southerly).

That's how it looks on the map. In fact, it's a narrow ridge, mostly level after you climb to it, sometimes right on the ridge, more often a ledge trail a couple of feet wide and ten feet or so below the ridge. The ground always drops away steeply from the trail, rarely at less than a 45=degree angle — the angle of repose, I suppose — and sometimes quite precipitously. I never look down from this trail: I look straight ahead, or at the path, or toward the distance.

 

The trail is well compacted and safe, but it was covered in a number of places by snow. Curt bravely postholed our path, once stomping into what turrned out to be a void, and we followed along, trying not to think about the glissade that would ensue if we slipped and fell.

It's an exhilharating trail, but it ultimately ends, descending by switchbacks, on stonier thus more difficult terrain, to the col de la Sauce. (I don't know why it's called that.) 

 

From there it's another descent, often on rutted paths only a foot wide, occasionally on a country road, through alpages full of flowers. The rhododendrons were  finally in bloom, on low shrubs suggesting thin soil.

I remembered this being the slope Mac had fallen on, eight years ago, breaking one of his hiking sticks: no sooner did I recall it than the path gave way beneath my left foot, sending me into a gentle rolling fall on my right side. No damage done, other than to my amour-propre.

We came out at a cafe-refuge on the departmental road, where I recalled eating a delicious apricot tart. Alas, there was only tartelettes de myrtilles today, those delicious mountain huckleberries that grow so prolifically hereabouts. We sat with tea and tartelettes for too long, considering how far we still had to go. 

Only fiffteen miinutes later, thhough, we passed the Gite Plan-Mya, where I remembered buying the best Beaufort I've ever tasted the last time I was by. The place looks different, spruced up, but I recognized the woman who runs it, and noted that she was wearing a Slow Food apron.

So we changed plans, cancelling tonight's reservation at Balme. We will eat well tonight, and sleep in a pleasant dortoir; tomorrow will be an eight-hour walk to the pretty town Valezan, and if they don't have beds for us there we'll call another taxi and go to Landry or Bourg St. Maurice.
 

Day 9: say nine or ten kilometers (only!), up from 2433 m at the Refuge Bonhomme to 2538 m at the Crete, then down to 2307 m at the col de Saucce and 1822 m at the Plan de Lai, then up to 1860 m at tonight's gite. Up 240 meters; down 700. No more than  three hours!

Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Alpwalk 3: La Chapelle d'Abondance to Chesery

Refuge de Chesery, Switzerland, Sunday, June 3

Apologies in advance for typiing: I'm still not used to this keyboard, and diacriticals are hard to achieve. Also I'm well behind in writiing, of course, partly for exhaustion, partly for distraction. 
 
My knee fully restored after a rest day in the marvelous family hotel Le Vieux Moulin — in the same family for 300 years, I'm told! — we set out from La Chapelle d'Abondance at 8:45 on a pleasant morning. We'd have preferred earlier, but breakfast isnt served here until 8 am. The day was pleasant but recent rains have left the ground muddy, and after the easy walk along the Dranse, when the trail climbs through forest, the going is tough: gnarled tree roots, stones, and slippery mud make for treacherous footing.
 
The compensation: fine fields of flowers. It's hard not to burst out laughing with pleasure at them: yellow buttercups, trolius, and dandelions; blue gentians and occasional crocuses, lots of white flowers I haven't identified. They're all scattered generously throughout the alpages; but now and then there'll be a patch so compactly arranged you'd swear they were gardened. And of course the fragrance is marvelous.
 
Another compensation, a little before the trying climb from one of those alpages to the col de Mattes: a brief stop at a milk-barn chalet for a cup of milk, given freely — quite fresh but already cooled, full tasting, sweet.

De Mattes is our first "real" col, in the sense that here for the first time was an abrupt break between kinds of terrain, I think, and that sudden view of magnificent mountains beyond, and the sobering realization that somehow we were going to thread our way among them — and no refuge, village, or road to be seen, nothing but space, green alpages, blue skies, grey serious mountains laced with snow.
 
We dropped three hundred meters over the next couple of hours, then took another treacherously muddy climb through "orchids, butterwort, alder scrub and mud," as we chanted, and finally reached the Refuge de Bassachaux where I had a pleasant dinner and night's sleep eight years ago. 

Alas it is under new direction and no longer accommodates overrnighters. Regulations, they say; I'm not sure I buy it. We had a pot of tea and resumed the long road to tonight's stay: the broad dirt road rises easily most of the way, then gives way to a stony path throuh the last alpages before the frontiere.
 
The refuge was reasonably pleasant. I was too tired to negotiate the civilities of the one shower, and anyway it was almost time for dinner. We had lamb in tomato sauce with pasta, a grated carrot salad, and a nice dessert; then I piled into the lower bunk, accommodating seven other sleepers though fortunately not all had appeared and I had only one neighbor. I slept well.

 


Alpwalk 3

Refuge de Chesery, Switzerland, Sunday, June 3

Apologies in advance for typiing: I'm still not used to this keyboard, and diacriticals are hard to achieve. Also I'm well behind in writiing, of course, partly for exhaustion, partly for distraction. 
 
My knee fully restored after a rest day in the marvelous family hotel Le Vieux Moulin — in the same family for 300 years, I'm told! — we set out from La Chapelle d'Abondance at 8:45 on a pleasant morning. We'd have preferred earlier, but breakfast isnt served here until 8 am. The day was pleasant but recent rains have left the ground muddy, and after the easy walk along the Dranse, when the trail climbs through forest, the going is tough: gnarled tree roots, stones, and slippery mud make for treacherous footing.
 
The compensation: fine fields of flowers. It's hard not to burst out laughing with pleasure at them: yellow buttercups, trolius, and dandelions; blue gentians and occasional crocuses, lots of white flowers I haven't identified. They're all scattered generously throughout the alpages; but now and then there'll be a patch so compactly arranged you'd swear they were gardened. And of course the fragrance is marvelous.
 
Another compensation, a little before the trying climb from one of those alpages to the col de Mattes: a brief stop at a milk-barn chalet for a cup of milk, given freely — quite fresh but already cooled, full tasting, sweet.

De Mattes is our first "real" col, in the sense that here for the first time was an abrupt break between kinds of terrain, I think, and that sudden view of magnificent mountains beyond, and the sobering realization that somehow we were going to thread our way among them — and no refuge, village, or road to be seen, nothing but space, green alpages, blue skies, grey serious mountains laced with snow.
 
We dropped three hundred meters over the next couple of hours, then took another treacherously muddy climb through "orchids, butterwort, alder scrub and mud," as we chanted, and finally reached the Refuge de Bassachaux where I had a pleasant dinner and night's sleep eight years ago. 

Alas it is under new direction and no longer accommodates overrnighters. Regulations, they say; I'm not sure I buy it. We had a pot of tea and resumed the long road to tonight's stay: the broad dirt road rises easily most of the way, then gives way to a stony path throuh the last alpages before the frontiere.
 
The refuge was reasonably pleasant. I was too tired to negotiate the civilities of the one shower, and anyway it was almost time for dinner. We had lamb in tomato sauce with pasta, a grated carrot salad, and a nice dessert; then I piled into the lower bunk, accommodating seven other sleepers though fortunately not all had appeared and I had only one neighbor. I slept well.

 

Saturday, July 2, 2016

Alpwalk 2



La Chapelle d'Abondance, July 2, 2016— 

I'd expected the second day to be the hardest, but not this hard. I awoke about five in the morning and went downstairs to write, but found the door to the common room locked, so spent some time outside, most in the entry hall where one sets one's sticks and boots. Not conducive to writing. The weather was cloudy but dry; the clouds drift by — at tthis altitudee, 2200 meters, you're actually in them — and occasional part allowing a glimpse of the marvelous view. Ibexes everywhere, of course. 

A little before  seven three healthy young people, two male and one female, shinnied up the cheminee wearing shorts, tanktops, trainers, and backpacks. extringuisher weighingg a good thirrty pounds, and they'd left La Fetiuere an hour and ten minutes beforee! Finally the common room was opened, and bowls of cafe au lait were brought, first to these three heroic porters, then to the rest of us. 

Breakfast here has improved: fruit juice as well as coffee; an apple as well as bread. Then it was time to attack the walk to La Chapelle, since the refuge at Bise is now closed. This would be a six-stage walk and it would be diifficult, though not including anything as ardduous as the cheminnee had been yesterday.
 
First we climbed, much of the time finger-and-toe on rocks, to the summit of the Dent, where we did not linger. Then came what was to me rather a brutal descent, some of the time traversing with the help of bolted chains, then steeply on broken granite, finally dirt-and-gravel, on switchbacks.

Next we climbed, again on dirt-and-gravel, to a first col, down, then up to the second, where a herd of complacent mature male ibex congregate; finally down a slope where the trail was two or three times covered with snow. And here suddenldy my right knee failed, in a familiar way: the meniscus had taken more than it wanted on the descents, wherwe now and then it had to twist sideways. 

I hobbled on, up to the Col de Bise, and then began a descent amost as hard as the one from the Dent, though not needing chains at least, because always in alpage. The trail here is dirt — rutted cowtracks, actually — and very uneven. In normal condition, and certainly when I was younger, this would not have been difficult: given the circumstances, it was slow and painful.

At the bottom both my legs suddenly gave way and I sat down hard. This was just at the large white stone on which my hiking partner had announced, three years ago, that he could go no farther. A wave of sympathy for him, and remorse for my earlier failure to express it — but that didn't help in the present sittuationn. Curt andd Jim were attentive, and volunteered to carry my backpack, but I rested a few minutes, then hobbled on..

There'd be no question of completing stages five and six, the reasonably easy ascent tto the next col and the rreasonaby difficcult descent from it and the stroll into La Chapelle. But there was no placee to sleeep in Bise now, only a fromagerie wheere we could buy beer and cheese. There was no ttelephone to ccall a cab, and our phones wwere useless in this isolatedd valley. And tthe road in and out was closed for road repair!

It would open at six, though, and then we could walk down it, seven kilometers, to the next town. In the end, thhough, we met a cadre of hikers ledd by two gguides, and one of thee guiddes volunteered tto drive us into town.

After a couple of hours of refreshment and conversation with the farmer's wife, and with Dorian a young Brussels fellow who was walking to Gap to visit his grandmother, we piled into Valentin's car. He drove us all the way to La Chapelle d'Abondance, where we arrived at about the time we'd expected.

Curt and I walked the quarter mile up to the hotel I remembered from three years ago, to find it unchanged and available; then back down to the center to get our packs and an elastic knee brace for me, then back to the hotel where we checked into the same room I'd had three years ago. 

What a relief to find hot and cold running water again, to shower, to be clean! And then a fine dinner and a solid sleep.

Our third day, today, Saturday, July 2, I rested and wrote and studied the road ahead. I'll walk down to the center in a few minutes and post this, I hope; then another dinner, another goodd sleep, and back, tomorrlow, on the trail…
 seven three healthy young people, two male and one female, shinnied up the cheminee wearing shorts, tanktops, trainers, and backpacks. Each was carrying a fi