TMB: Les Chapieux to La Visaille (Courmayeur)

Another belated blog post! I think I might have just caught up by the time we leave Courmayeur, but then will immediately get behind again because I assume Refugio Bonatti won’t have internet of any kind.

Day 3 was a day of compromises. Because of our unwillingness to sleep on platforms with scores of other hikers at Refugio Elisabetta we had to end up instead in Courmayeur. Realistically for our level of fitness that required cutting the journey short at both ends. At the start of the day, we took a shuttle bus from Les Chapieux to Valle des Glaciers, and at the end of the day, we diverted from the path and headed for La Visaille, where we caught a bus to Courmayeur.

Breakfast at Auberge de la Nova was very basic–just bread, granola, and coffee. We felt a bit lacking in protein later in the day as a result.

We walked the short distance to the shuttle stop and headed up the hill at 8:30 with many other hikers. It was about 2.5 mile drive on a narrow road with steep drop offs and various sizes of vehicles coming the other way. At one point our driver reversed at speed to allow a truck to pass. Yikes.

We disembarked at Valle des Glaciers rather than going all the way to the Refuge des Mottets stop, because we were advised that the later stop was across the valley from the trail and would require us to walk quite a bit down and back up again, vs relatively gradual climb from this earlier stop. Here’s the view we had of the refuge after that gradual climb. Still early enough in the day that we felt no need to walk down there for refreshment.

Climbing climbing climbing toward Col de la Seigne and Italy. In this photo you get a bit of sense of the crowds…too many people!

Col de la Seigne. This marks the boundary between where I know bits of the language and where I know almost none!!!

We paused up here for a snack and then headed down. Beautiful wildflowers the whole way down.

We thought this was a possible refreshment stop…but it turned out to be a museum!!! Can’t imagine how frustrating that would be on a cold, wet, windy day when you hoped to find shelter and a warm drink.

So we forged on, expecting Refugio Elisabetta to be around every single corner…it wasn’t!

Finally, it appeared. But way too high up for us to be willing to walk there. So we skipped refreshment here too. By now, our diet of Smarties, nuts, and water is beginning to feel a tad inadequate.

The terrain changed here, with an impressive terminal moraine holding back a marshy flat area with a dead-straight road on it.

Dave was none too impressed by the straight road…

On the other hand, I quite liked a flat easy walk for a change!

The water was clearly glacial…

After crossing the river we walked for (2?) miles down a very steep road. Amazingly, there were crowds of people coming the other way–families with small children and babies, teenagers, hikers. What a long hot steep climb they had.

When we got to La Visaille, finally, we had ice cream and coffee. Could not remember the Italian for ice cream (gelato!) and even the simple words like please, thank you, yes, etc I’m very shaky on partly because I hear Spanish far more often than Italian. Luckily, Google has clued into this and if I type any word into the search bar, it auto completes to “in Italian”, eg. “please in Italian”.

After about 40 minutes, the bus arrived. I perched on a baggage rack because standing for 30 minutes would have been excruciating. My back\hip\legs are complaining louder and louder every day.

The hotel! Aaaaaaah. Lovely welcome–bags already in room, helpful and friendly people, and just all around nice place to spend our two rest days ahead.