On Our Way

Sure wish I could sleep sitting up! It's the middle of the night and we're somewhere over the Atlantic. Our flights have gone well so far. We scored emergency exit row window seats on the two longest legs. We're due to land in Geneva in about 4 hours.

Looks like I'm going to be in the midst of a Cartwright family reunion for a few days. Tami's sister, Billie, is going to join us for the first week and her (Tami's) daughter, Jess, will join us for one day in Chamonix and for our first day of hiking. I think I'm going to have to break out the adoption papers!

Everything has gone according to plan. We arrived to a beautiful day in Geneva and easily picked up a van ride to Chamonix. Lunch at a creperie and sitting outside enjoying the view (photo below)

And then we found some truly crazy people! Seems the UTMB (Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc) starts from Chamonix at 16:30 today. Over 2000 runners run 160 km day and night until they finish back here in as little as 20 hours. OMG! By comparison, we'll be taking 2 weeks to hike 180 km.

What is the Haute Route?

Chamonix, France to Zermatt, Switzerland. Mount Blanc to the Matterhorn. This 2-inch slice of the map of Switzerland will take us over 2 weeks to hike the 180 km up (over 12,000 metres or about 40,000 feet) and down (more than 10,000 metres or about 33,000 feet) while crossing 11 mountain passes. The literature (Kev Reynolds' Cicerone Guide) tells us we will see the greatest collection of 4000m peaks in all the Alps and visit some of the most spectacular valleys. We're told we'll find delightful villages and remote alp hamlets, wander flower meadows and deep fragrant forests, skirt exquisite tarns (small mountain lakes) that toss mountains on their heads, cross icy streams and clamber beside glaciers that hang suspended from huge buttresses of rock. Etc, etc. Don't you just want to go??

It seems that there are at least 3 different "Haute Route"s that go from Chamonix to Zermatt. There is the ski touring route, which is a winter/spring expedition and is well beyond my skiing abilities. The original High Level Route (later re-named the Haute Route) was developed more than 100 years ago as a summer mountaineering expedition route. It links lots of mountain peaks and crosses glacier passes. We won't be doing that one either. We will be hiking the "walker's" Haute Route. It never quite reaches 3000m on any of its passes, it requires no technical mountaineering skills and it avoids glacier crossings. Except for the shocking amount of elevation gain/loss, it sounds to be entirely do-able.

We will be taking 14 days to hike the route. We've built in one rest in the middle and an extra day in both Chamonix and Zermatt. Our first hiking day will be September 1st.

I will try to update this blog as we go. However - that depends on the availability of wifi and my ability to stay awake after collapsing at the end of each day. I won't have a keyboard with me so I'll be typing directly into my iPhone. I'm pretty sure that novelty will run out very quickly and that the posts will be a tad brief.

This one has been on my bucket list for a few years now, so I'm really looking forward to getting underway. Now, if only this knee tendonitis would go away.....