Refuge de la Valette to Refuge d’Aussois – Lowest Ebb and Highest Pain
We were walking high up on the Route des Glaciers today, although the climb in total was a big one as the route weaves up and down. The stark, vertical rock faces mean that any footpath along the side of a mountain needs to drop down underneath or climb up over the top of each one.
I didn’t feel great as my cold had taken hold and my chest was tight as a duck’s arse. But I had slept better on the kitchen floor than I had expected. We pushed off into another beautiful day.
The glaciers were shining in the sun.
This was going to be a long slog and my spirits weren’t too high, as I coughed up chunks of yellow phlegm and spat them on the ground. Holding each nostril in turn and blowing snot around the place. I wasn’t feeling good.
In the meantime we marched along and Danny was determined to reach our next goal. Looking across at the next mountainside our path wound up and down in the sun.
Part way through the day I thought that I couldn’t make it and said to Danny that I felt like dropping down into the valley and walking back to the hotel in Pralognan that we had stayed in two nights ago. He chided me and said we needed to carry on.
And carry on I did, with weakening enthusiasm and pain in my chest and legs. I lost my will to take photos and felt more and more like dropping down and finding somewhere to rest. Dan took some of the weight from my rucksack and put it in his own.
The path turned sharply upwards but we missed it, and carried on along a lesser track that petered out on the side of the mountain. We struggled down the slope and through thick foliage to a path that we had seen a woman walking on earlier. What we didn’t realise was how far out of our way this mistake had brought us. Way down below where we needed to be.
Struggling back up to where we should have been it was clear that the sun was beginning to sink towards the horizon. We were ten hours into this walk and we were facing the last and most severe climb of the day.
Dan ran on ahead, dumped his rucksack and came back for mine. I struggled to climb even without my rucksack. He made three heroic runs like this until he was too exhausted to do it any more. I found some strength from his example and forged ahead with my rucksack whilst he followed on behind me, a dark form in the rubble below.
As we climbed higher and the shadows lengthened the Chamois came out to graze.
After eleven hours of walking we were beat on our feet, but we were high, even drawing level with some of the lower, smaller glaciers along the range.
Finally we reached the summit of the Col d’Auchois, at over 9,000 feet.
Our route to the Refuge dropped down through a tricky, rocky and rugged landscape, falling another 1,500 feet.
I have rarely been so fatigued. The last time was again with Dan when the village we were due to stay in, high in the Himalayas, had been washed away by a catastrophic flood, and we had to walk another full day’s trek in four hours.
We walked past a herd of Alpine Ibex and I couldn’t be motivated to lift my iPad to take a photo. The dropping path was never ending. And the last rays of sunshine lit up the higher peaks to the east of us.
As darkness fell, after more than twelve hours trekking, we made it to the Refuge, in the middle of nowhere, and it was heaving. We found an empty table in the far end of the kitchen diner and dropped down onto the bench, absolutely buggered. A French bloke from a nearby group, who had pitched their tents outside the Refuge, took pity on us and brought over a can of super strength lager and we quaffed it quite quickly. He brought over a pan of pork stew and ladled some out for us. Heavenly.
And the French philanthropy was capped by him bringing over a bottle of Alpine liquor and pouring us a glass each. Genepi. Tasting like the tears of an angel.
You can’t repay kindness like that.
As the crowd thinned out we put some padding that a woman had given us down on the dining room floor and spread our sleeping bags over the top.
Night night.
