Short summary -- beautiful balcony trail.
Rifugio Soldini was OK, but not great, but we did have a piece of good luck: I had been unable to reserve for Père Ephrem (a combination of poor network coverage in the Alps and apparent chaos at the refuge) so I asked Lidia to reserve another space as soon as she arrived. The result was that instead of 8 of us being in a 30 bed dormitory with many others, we were put into a 7 bed dorm room and a double. Much better!
The last day's hike turned out to be shorter than expected because Beatrice found us a shortcut into Entrèves that allowed us to avoid an extra hour along roads to and from Courmayeur. We set off around 8:15 and arrived around 2:15. After a pleasant stroll along the bed of a dried out glacial lake we climbed a few hundred meters up to a beautiful (there's that word again) balcony trail with superb views across the valley to the Mont Blanc massif and its glaciers. I'll post a couple of photos, but I could post a hundred.
The final descent into Entrèves was hot and dusty... but not only was it, as mentioned above, shortened thanks to Bea, in addition she camed out to meet us so we didn't have to search for the hotel, and to top it off she had the hotel lay out champagne and orange juice and some sandwiches as a welcome buffet! A delightful finish to the first part of the H3H!!
Some final thoughts tomorrow....
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