Marmot Country

The day after our much enjoyed rest day, we went to Courmayeur again, but this time we walked there via a rather different, and much more interesting, if harder route, than that followed by the bus.

Strangely enough, our day did in fact start with a bus trip, but no, we weren't cheating, we were simply going back, in the opposite direction to Courmayeur, to the place where we had caught the bus to go to our campsite 2 days ago.

On the Tour de Mont Blanc (TMB), whenever you leave a road, there is always a steep uphill, but we were all fresh after our rest day and marched up with few stops. Then there was a lovely ridge walk, with a good path, so we really could look all around and safely enjoy the mountain vistas.

As always, we scampered ahead, but we were impressed to see our minders almost keeping up with us bears. We liked to wait for them in the sun on these way marking points. It is interesting to note that most of the places marked were the refuges which provided us with our coffee stops. As we sat waiting for our minders, we were pleased to note that one was coming up, the Bonatti refuge, just 15 minutes away. 

Just before our coffee stop we had a real treat, our first marmot sighting ... 

We were simply thrilled to see one of these elusive creatures and we loved what we saw. We had heard them many times and scoured the mountain sides to see them, but of course, what we were hearing was their distress call, so they had already gone into hiding and were not coming out ... until today.

After coffee, we did a bit more undulating before a steady climb up a glacial valley which ended in a steep climb to a col where we had a quick lunch as there was a rather cold wind. The climb after lunch was unbelievably steep -  it was almost vertical - but mercifully it was quite short.

Then it was downhill for the whole of the afternoon's walk. As you can see from our next photo, it was mostly a long gentle downhill, although when there was a steep section, it was steep.

This was also wild flower day and Gio was in his element. We had to keep an eye on him otherwise we'd have left him behind, communing with pink, yellow and gentian blue alpine flowers.

It seemed to take forever to get to Courmayeur and it was extremely hot. Thankfully, when we arrived, we found a marvellous ice cream parlour which served heavenly ice creams. From Courmayeur it was a choice of bus or walk to the camp site. Nobody walked!

Lots of love, George, Yorkie and Gio xxx