Well today started out ok, we had a bit of a delay as the main road to our hiking trailhead was closed this morning. Why do you ask? Well last night was thunder, lightning and a bunch of rain – so much that the road wasn’t safe supposedly to drive. Our scheduled taxi driver said the road was closed and had another fare – but in the end it worked out, he found us a buddy driver and off we went into the abyss.

The abyss you say? Looks pretty great by the pictures – well let me say that all started well – it was lightly raining and we were meandering our way down the path and then starting up the 2,600 foot ascent to the top and then starting our 3,300 foot descent back down. The grind up wasn’t so bad to start – but I kept looking behind us at the clouds going lower, and lower and then you could see a big wall of water sort of coming from these clouds… and well then it started really raining.

As we approached the last mile and last 1000 vertical feet a whole lotta rain started and the temperature dropped – my guess it was now 45F, so what was ok ten minutes ago wasn’t so fun at the very moment. We kept going – sort of knew we should have stopped right there, but it was at a precarious place on the trail – so we pressed on. The rain pressed on as well. Near the top I could see it was really blowing – so about 300 meters from the summit we stopped, took off our packs and proceeded to take of rain stuff to put on more warm stuff and rain pants and gloves/hat/etc. When you’re cold and wet it’s much harder to do – but we did it.

Now that we were dressed more appropriately – we were freezing – noticing that others were still hiking up in shorts (they are tough I guess) – so we climbed up to the top – wind was blowing the rain sideways… Some other climbers were standing behind a marker to block the wind and yelling a lot – pretty much loving the conditions I guess.

Who wasn’t loving the conditions? You guessed right – the princess actually said “Why the F are we doing this?” – which made me laugh as she proceeded to hippy-hop down the trail. I now know how to make Cindy go really fast downhill – you put her in a really stressful situation that she wants to get out of and “bam” she goes – no waiting, no talking about it, just “we’re outta here” and we go. Our going up pace was say 40 minutes/mile – our downhill I think was 10-15 mins/mile…. Once we were about half a mile from the summit (8,500 ft) the wind had dropped and the rain slowed a bit – but we were cold.

We proceeded down, past a Refugio – packed with people – so we kept going. I ate my ham/cheese sandwich that the hotel made me on the hike down and we slowly came back to normal – although we were both pretty cold. Note to self – next time you see the big wall of water coming – do something first, don’t wait. My thing is I didn’t want to get hot hiking up the hill – guess bad choice.

Once finally down, we walked through a lovely small village and then took a bus to our current town (Champex-Lax) – staying at the Hotel Speldide – which is great – and I surprised Cindy by going downstairs and getting her a hot chocolate – so all is well with the world.

Tomorrow it is forecast to rain some more, but possibly only in the afternoon. Our hike is only about six hours, another 2300 foot day and the same about ten miles. Good thing is the altitude only goes up to about 6,500 feet vs. 8,500 that the other days have been at.

We did change our return back to Geneva though – rather than staying in Chamonix (bad hotel) we will just take the van at 5 pm back Friday to Geneva and we found a good hotel. Then flight back process starts Saturday at 10 a.m.

Funny thing about today – it’s good to press yourself – push your limits – know that you can do it and smile when it’s over and make fun of yourself. Mud everywhere, but more steps to make tomorrow.