Our group of friends - a subset of the "Ely Group," set our sights on hiking the Tour Du Mont Blanc sometime in late 2016. We were a group of eight: Jerry Rosen and Martha Brand, John and Diane Herman, Martin Sampson, Kathleen Graham, Carolyn Chalmers and Eric Janus. John's sister had hiked the route and loved it. Carolyn and Eric had a long history of inn-to-inn hiking in France, and Carolyn was focused on hiking in the Alps.
We were in our late 60's, early 70's. We understood that we'd need to be in good shape to do this hike. We understood a regime of training walks was necessary - we aimed for 6 miles or more with hills, once or twice a week, in the late winter and early spring of 2017.
On the way to the bus. Buying lunch.
Waiting for the lift.
Carolyn and Eric
Lunch
Carolyn and Kathleen
Dinner at Revola
Wednesday, July 12. Arrival. Carolyn and Eric arrived mid afternoon, as did Martin. They walked around the charming and bustling town of Chamonix. Martin met the others at the train station where they came in from Lyon. The Lyon contingent (Jerry, Martha, Kathleen, John and Diane) arrived late due to a train breakdown. Supper in a simple place, (Bocalatte) nice deck under Mont Blanc, as the darkness descended. We stayed in La Faucny, an excellent small hotel with great service.
Thursday, July 13. Rest day in Chamonix. Today we, except for Martin who had errands, took the cable car up from Chamonix to Le Flegere. We then walked the Balcon Sud trail to Plan Praz, looking at Mont Blanc the whole way. We came down on the Plan Praz cable car. 3.5 miles. Relatively level. A great warm up and it turned out that this walk is a piece of the last TMB day. We had the first of many tasty lunches—sandwiches of cheese, pate, prosciutto, mustard and cornichon with delicious melon and of course, chocolate.
Dinner at Revola--very quiet and nice, excellent food, sat outside. We watched part of the World Climbing Championship on the way back from the restaurant, several women climbing up a huge wall set up in the square. As we went to bed, we were reminded that July 14 (tomorrow) is Bastille Day so there was a long fireworks display and boisterous street parties. We stayed put in our beds, knowing that we needed an early start to our first real TMB day.
