Our First "Big" Day

Or, as the guidebook says - "one of the most demanding of the whole walk". We started at Trient and finished at Champex. 14 km, almost 1400m of up and 1200m of descent. Unlike biking, the descent can be just as challenging as the ascent. Lots of variety of scenery along the way - hiking up beside the impressive Trient Glacier and then steeply down into the lovely Val d'Arpette. A couple of things that are recurring themes for us. The hiking may be rugged in places but we are never too far away from civilization. So far we have started and finished in a village every day and sometimes encounter villages along the way as well. It's so nice to have a hot shower and a comfy bed every night. And food is pretty available so that we don't have to carry much with us. I also find it shocking that I took and passed 4 years of high school French and have only mastered hello, goodbye, thank you, and "I do not speak French".

We started out early this morning, having a hint about what lay ahead. Uphill from the beginning, the grade gradually increased from gentle through challenging to scrambling straight uphill. I think this may have been Billie's first go at scrambling and exposure because she cried (her words). It was a beautiful cloudless, windless and warm day and we had a great lunch break at the pass. Then began the steep downhill. At one point I slipped on a small rock, couldn't recover my footing in time and went over the side of the trail; oops! I rolled a few times, managed a self-arrest before getting too far down. No harm done and we continued down. We finished the day with a lovely forest, fern and stream walk before finishing in the town of Champex, also known as Champex-Lac due to its lakeside location. We have a nice little hotel on the edge of town. The view from our room is provided below.