Bill Grabert's Tour du Mont Blanc 2024

Today’s hike from Argentiere to the Planpratz cable car is known for its series of ladders up cliff faces. It also passes some pretty glacial lakes. Mainly it traverses high on the side of the mountains north of the Chamonix valley. That means that all day I was looking at Mont Blanc across the valley.  The weather was great today. If anything, it was too warm and sunny. I’m afraid I put on sunscreen a bit late.  My Garmin watch says that I hiked 10.59 miles, 5,561 ft climbing today. 32,605 steps.  Support Tuleyome   I took the Planpratz cable car down to Chamonix to stay the night. Tomorrow I take it back up to finish my Tour du Mont Blanc in Les Houches. 

  Rain fell all day today.  There’s not much to say about it except that it wasn’t that bad and I got really wet.  And there wasn’t much of a view. The wet forest is still really beautiful though. The only thing that got really cold was my hands. By the end of the day I had trouble holding on to a zipper and could barely re-tie my shoe.  The trail went over Col de Balme, another frontier taking me from Switzerland back into France, the country I started from. The hotel tonight in Argentiere, France is fantastic  I have a private room and took a long very hot shower as soon as I checked in. Support Tuleyome  

There are lots of pictures I forgot to take and don’t realize it until it’s too late. Yesterday I hiked past the beautiful Lake Campex and sat for an hour at a cafe right next to it with some new Scottish friends, and never took a picture. Every night I’ve been staying in interesting places, dormitories mostly, and as soon as I leave I think “I should have taken a picture of the bedroom or the dining room”. They’re such dynamic places with backpacks strewn all over or people engaged in conversations with friends they just met.  I have my own mental pictures, but unfortunately, I can’t share them with you because I forgot to take the pictures.  Today’s forest trail The hike today was wonderful as always. The big decision was whether to take the high “extreme” trail variant. There was a possibility of rain and dense cloud so I decided not to take it. One guy I talked to said that it wasn’t too bad, it cleared up enough to get a view and he saw an ibex (an alpine mountain goat wi...