We went our separate ways today. I had a not-great night of sleep–leg was painful, and it was too hot in the room. And I wasn’t in any better headspace than I was at the end of yesterday. So I decided to take the train to Chamonix and the cable car up to La Flegere, then walk on the trail to Lac Blanc where I hoped to meet Dave.
Dave on the other hand took the train in the opposite direction, to Montroc, where he’s rejoin the trail from yesterday, climbing back up via several ladders that I felt were a step too far for me.
View from the bedroom this morning–lots of clouds at dawn, but mostly clear by the time we had breakfast.
Dave left at about 8am. He takes mostly videos, which I don’t know how to incorporate in the blog, so most of this post is about my journey rather than his! I left at about 8:40am. Station is just a 3 minute walk away.
Train arrived right on schedule–8:54am. Clean, smooth, and packed with people.
The La Flegere cable car was 5 minutes walk from the 3rd stop on the train. Pretty church en route.
I was stunned to see the lines for the cable car. It took an hour before I was on the lift…ironic that my lack of enthusiasm to hike much more instead had me doing the single most painful thing: standing still!!
Almost to the door to the building, I can see that the line had grown even longer.
Yay–finally! Of course, more standing in the gondola but it’s only a 5 minute ride or so.
Lovely view from the top.
Meanwhile, a rare still from Dave’s camera. I don’t think this is Lac Blanc…I think it’s a smaller lake before Lac Blanc. Beautiful.
I started climbing toward Lac Blanc…an unpleasant ski-resort tramp at first, but then a more interesting but slow scramble on rocky paths.
I think this is the Refuge de Lac Blanc–currently closed.
Dave took video at Lac Blanc but no stills. I (as you can probably guess) never made it that far…because the cable car had taken so long, Dave got to the lake well before I could, and it seemed pointless for him to wait while I hoofed it the last bit up some steep climbs, only to come back down again. So I paused at a dry lake and waited for him to come down. Here he is, mid-slope 🙂
Then we walked back to the cable car, with that big black cloud dropping occasional huge raindrops, but not enough to make anything wet. There were hoards of day hikers on the trail, most of whom weren’t carrying anything at all–it would be a nasty place to get caught by a vicious thunderstorm.
Literally no wait to get on the cable car down–we walked on and they closed the doors and descended. It was a mile or so boring walk next to the glacial river into the middle of Chamonix. Finally, our hotel–the smaller building in this photo. Our room looks our over the river.
The room was awfully hot, so we went in search of air conditioning! We found it at the Salon de The (or something like that) where I had a delicious Framboise Melba Glace, and Dave had an equally good looking banana split.
The cafe also had spectacular desserts. Hard to show scale, but these were beautifully sized–nothing grotesquely large. I wish US bakeries wouldn’t keep making cakes ever bigger.
Thoroughly cooled down, we walked through Chamonix under gathering clouds, rather hoping for a thunderstorm. It never materialized, so it’s still awfully muggy out.
Then back to the front door of the hotel this time…
