Part 2 of the TMB story... — Lisa's (& Steve's) Travels

On our 4th morning, we could see the rain clouds coming up behind us…

… but ahead was all sunshine and cowbells -

Every cow in the herds we passed had their own bell…

… and when they were all ringing with any move of their heads, it made some pretty nice music. Now, you’ll have to forgive me for this next odd video, but this was the best sequence of cowbells I filmed, with absolutely nothing going on to see. (the usual note here - open this post in a browser so you can hear the bells, by clicking the link at the end of the email) (you might even need to click the “watch on Youtube” button)

To those of you who astutely noticed that these cows and surroundings don’t look like where I left you in the story, you’re right. This is a throwback to Switzerland.

OK. Back on the TMB…

… there always seemed to be more glaciers and valleys -

After we crossed the pass that day, the rain caught up to us in the afternoon. And so did an unbelievable number of trail runners. Most days of our trek we’d be passed in either direction by small numbers of trail runners, but this day, they just kept coming, barreling down the hill toward the valley. We found out that there was a race that day that had 2,000 participants running either 20, 50 or 100 km!

Luckily the rain was never very heavy, but it did keep up for several hours.

This was our welcome into Italy, into Courmayeur -

Courmayeur is a beautiful town…

… and we really enjoyed being able to spend 2 nights here (in contrast to every other night on the trek being in a different town) and as you can see, the weather cleared up beautifully. We also enjoyed our “day hike” of an out and back trail…

… to a couple of lakes…

… that lifted my soul…

… and left me smiling all day -

This out and back trail ended up being 10 miles, but the terrain was gentle enough that we “only” took a little over 5 hrs to complete it.

did you notice all the waterfalls coming from the glaciers?

That nice respite of a day was followed by our longest and hardest day of the trek. By my GPS we hiked over 14 miles (Steve recorded almost 13 miles) with over 5,000 ft elevation gain and it took us 8 hours. We started with a steep climb out of Courmayeur…

… passed more glaciers…

… and more -

There was lots of Purple Gentian…

… and even some Spotted Gentian -

Our lunch break was at Rifugio Bonatti…

… with that view from our bench as we ate our packed sandwiches. This was almost 9 miles and 5 hours into our day, but we didn’t stay here as they only had dorm rooms. We moved on…

… to have to hike down to a valley and then back up again (another 1500 ft of gain) on increasingly tired legs to Rifugio Elena. We were just about the last ones to drag in.