Refuge de Plan du Lac to Refuge Vallonbrun – The Day of Pigs
It’s a play on the infamous Kennedy debacle where US sponsored Cuban expats landed at the Bay of Pigs to overthrow Castro. It backfired and they were all killed or rounded up within three days. Two months earlier the Beatles had played their first gig at the Cavern in Liverpool. They were paid £5.
I don’t know if the world is better now or just different. There was a real threat of global destruction, triggered by the Bay of Pigs, caused by the Cuban missile crisis. I remember lying awake at night listening to aeroplanes and thinking that they might be Soviet missiles. I was eight years old. Four years later I lay awake at night terrified by the thought of infinity in terms of time and space and trying to work it out. I didn’t want to reincarnate back into this life when I died. That really worried me. I was prescribed Valium for a few years and it didn’t make me happy but it stopped the night terrors.
Strange things childhood.
I think the world has become a worse place. Wealth concentration, greed and the excesses of an unfettered ability to exploit markets and people are a disgrace. The wielding of power by idiots who are unfit to wipe my arse is a disgrace. The rise of organised crime, unrestricted pollution, John Lennon’s assassination, the control exerted by obscenely rich media owners and dysfunctional democracy are all horrible, horrible things. A disgrace.
The day was another beautiful one. Shine on you crazy glaciers.
We set off with a jaunty air, with a 22 kms day and substantial rises and falls ahead. We dropped down the valley we had climbed up yesterday and then veered to our left and climbed up over the shoulder of the mountain. Good, cooler weather for walking.
After a couple of hours we came over the brow to the main valley which we had rapidly descended into two nights ago.
Turning left and heading away from Termignon we dropped a thousand feet or so down into the valley through a forest. As soon as we were in the forest there was loud bellowing close by, with similar bellowing answering it from a few hundred metres distance. I’ve heard these noises before. They are wild boars, and big ones by the sound of it. Danny went off into the undergrowth to catch sight of them and disturbed a couple which crashed away through the undergrowth. The bellowing came back at various stages throughout this Day of Pigs.
This valley is not too far from Italy. The glacier clad mountain in the centre of this photo straddles the border between France and Italy.
Once we had descended to a lower track it started rising again.
Let’s explain this trek better. I’m frustrated with myself that I haven’t done this before. This red line is the route and we started in the north east corner at Val d’Isere. At this point in time we’ve come right round anti-clockwise, to the point where that short thick red line crosses our route.
To the south of where we are at the moment is a valley opposite us with one of the biggest lakes in France. That valley runs up to a pass that crosses over into Italy. Today the warmth of the lake, probably fanned by a cooler wind coming down the pass from Italy, created heavy cloud in that valley which pushed towards us for the entire afternoon.
However, as soon as the cloud entered the main valley below us the ambient temperatures at the lower level dispersed the cloud and prevented it from progressing beyond the mountain gap. It was a bit of a meteorological push of war, with the cloud making a little progress on occasions into the main valley, only to be vanquished and held at bay.
This broader perspective shows the height at which the cloud was pinned back in its valley and the warmer haze in the main valley below. It also shows the extent of the forest on both sides of the valley that resounded with the roar of wild pigs.
After eight hours of walking we came upon the Refuge Vallonbrun. We didn’t know if it was open, all that we knew was that it wasn’t staffed. Danny went into the grounds and disappeared. Fingers crossed that he gets in. And he did!
By climbing a small hill at the side of the Refuge we were able to get a signal and take in the views as the afternoon turned to evening.
We had carried two cans of lager each for two days and tonight we would drink them. Together with a can of couscous with a spicy Moroccan vegetable and chicken sauce. I slept on the kitchen floor. It’s not a bad place to end the day.
Night night.
