Day 6: La Fouly to Champex

What an amazing lady. You may recall that right at the end of the first day’s hike, as I approached Les Contamines, I met a woman who’d been unfortunate enough to slip and had her arm in a sling, walking pole in her other hand. Well today there she was again, still going strong! Her name is Linda, and she hails from Colorado, and at the grand old age of 81 she is fighting fit and doing one of the toughest multi day hikes you can do, despite that little setback.

I’m pleased to say she’s now accompanied by two young hikers who have been helping make sure she stays safe. I hope to see her again, maybe at the very end back in Les Houches, who knows?

Anyway, back to the start. Today was supposedly the easiest day of the trail, and while it was less of a climb that the last four days, because a lot of this took place in the final third of the day it felt harder going than expected.

First there was some easy forest walking, with openings where you could see the accompanying mountains and the river the trail was following.

Unfortunately, at one point there had been a landslip so we were diverted to the other side of the river, which meant that I missed the shortcut I had intended to make to miss a trickier part of the walk. Instead, after a little section with chains on the rock, the path descended down steeply and I found this a little unnerving as it was narrow and sandy. But taking my time I was alright, although when the path widened and I allowed the people I knew were behind me to pass about a dozen steamed past.

In the middle of the day, I met a hiker from Sussex , alongside another from Uruguay, who had come back to do the trail ten years after his first circuit. He said it was much, much busier than the last time he’d been here. We walked through the village of Praz de Fort together, and then they forged ahead as I dawdled through the pretty little wooden buildings of Les Arlaches.

Then after a quick lunch it was onwards and upwards for the sting in the tail of today’s hike. A steep ascent, then another diversion that took us down, and then up very steeply, adding extra climbing to the route. I kept coming across the same people as we all took breaks to catch our breath and rest whenever we needed to. The cooler temperature of earlier in the day (it had rained overnight) was overtaken by clammy, humid conditions and I was sweating profusely as the climb seemed to carry on and on.

During this last bit of the hike there were various wooden sculptures of animals in the forest dotted along the trail. But what we really wanted was it to flatten out.

Even when my gps told me there was only another 2.5km and 200 m of height to go, it took another another hour before I finally reached the beautiful resort of Champex, on its mirror lake.

Today’s walk may have only been 604 metres up, but it still felt a lot, and the descent (733m) and distance 17.5 km , made it one of the longer days.

Tomorrow is my rest day, at Champex, by the lake, and after six days I have walked nearly 100km and ascended and descended over 5000 metres. Unfortunately, Wednesday, when I’m due to resume the hike the weather forecast looks ominously wet all day, so I might have forego stage 7 altogether and catch various buses instead. That would be a shame, but better safe than sorry. The sort of terrain covered is not where you want to be in the middle of heavy rain, with sand turning to mud, and warnings in my guide book of a few streams to cross which pose problems after heavy rain. And doing it tomorrow would be logistically difficult with all accommodation booked months ahead.

Anyway, we shall have to wait and see.