In which we confront... and conquer... the challenge of bad weather and a high pass
I must have been really tired that night in St. Rhemy -- I titled the previous blog post Day 3 when it was only Day 2. Please rest assured that this blog post really is for the third day... I know this because I'm not tired... it's our first rest day (after four days of hiking), and we are in the beautiful Maison d'Antan in Balme taking it easy!
But back to Stage 3.... Dinner in the Hotel des Alpes was excellent... both the food and the service... but the weather the following day, well, that was not so good. The forecast was for heavy rain in the morning, and less heavy rain in the afternnon, with the snow line climbing from 2550 to 2650m... a little disconcerting since we were facing a 2725m pass. However, we woke up to suprisingly sunny skies, and allowed ourselves a ray of hope... which didn't last long. By the time we walked off after breakfast the sky had clouded over, and around 11AM a steady rain set in.
At noon we stopped at a convenient ruined hut... the first shelter we had seen for a while... and wolfed down lunch. It was time, both because we were running out of energy, and also because the big climb of the day -- some 900m up to the Col de Champillon was just ahead. Climbing in rain gear is never fun... it restricts one's movements and one tends to oscillate between being too cold and overheating. Add in the slippery footing and you can imagine that my two hiking partners didn't react with enthusiasm when I reminded them that we were here to have fun.
The climb was relentless, and some two and a half hours later morale was low, and we were getting hungry again, when we saw the pass ahead for the first time... covered with snow. You could almost hear the last reserves of energy fizzle away. Fortunately there was another ruined hut... the first one we had seen during the whole climb, right there... so we stopped for a second lunch before the final stretch. And when we came out of the hut we found that the rain had stopped... and we even had a little sun as we went up the last couple of hundred vertical meters to the pass. Things were looking up!
It turned out that there was only a little snow on the ground, so we had no problem following the trail, and the grassy pass was reached without further ado. Another challenge on the H3H surmounted!
After the pass we had a short 300m descent to the Rifugio Champillon where we found the hut full of soggy hikers, a tiny room shared with two others, minimal water pressure in the shower, and uninspiring food. But we weren't bothered... after such a day minor annoyances are seen for what they are: just minor annoyances.
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