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Thursday, August 23rd, 2007
After a night in which the rain on the roof (just over our heads) sounded like thunder, we woke up to a cloudless blue sky and a spectacular view of Mont Blanc over the ridge to our south.
We had a pleasant breakfast (as dinner had also been) chatting with a dutch couple who has been doing the GR5 (long distance hiking trail from North Sea to Mediterranean) bit by bit over the last 11 years. This year they have taken four weeks and hope to finish it. Since by my calculations they have only 19 stages to do, and also since in past years they have hiked up to 20 days straight (Sally blanched :-), I think they'll manage it.
The hike was absolutely lovely, through increasingly wild terrain with brilliant views on all sides up to the 2340m Col du Brevent. Local convection clouds at the pass prevented us from seeing Mont Blanc in all its glory, but once we had descended a couple of hundred meters we had a clear view. What an incredible location! The glaciers flowing down through the woods across the valley from us were blinding white in the sun, and the immense size of Mont Blanc was at the same time obvious and yet difficult to grasp.
At a restaurant at Plan Praz we stopped for a (second) lunch and looked through a telescope at the telepherique (gondola) up to the Aiguille de Midi: an astounding feat of construction. Chamonix is simply a place for superlatives.
We found our hotel quickly (Russ and Sally had been there a couple of days before on their boot-buying mission) and then I walked through the town for an hour (before dialling into a 4 hour conference call... connectivity does have its down-sides :-).
Chamonix is a lovely place! A mixture of shops and galleries and restaurants and sports outfitters and hotels, some in new buildings, some old, with an extensive and well-designed pedestrian area, and everywhere when you look up... those amazing views. A little like Provincetown, or Aspen, or anywhere else that has managed to devote itself to tourism without -- somehow -- losing its soul.
It was also full of people, in part, we quickly learned, due to the presence of some 500 or so competitors (and their accompanying supporters / family members) in an ultra-marathon that was to start the following day: 160km and 8900m up and down around the entire massif of Mont Blanc. Like I have said before: no matter what you do, there are others who are doing something even more remarkable (i.e., insane :-).
The decision to spend a couple of rest-days here was a good one....
