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Today was the easiest day of the Tour du Mont Blanc. This easy day came at exactly the right time for me - my left knee hurt badly today. I must have strained it on the long descent from Grand Col Ferret. It wasn't that steep coming down, but it was a long way down. With my knee bothering me, I went slowly and stopped for a lot of breaks. Today was the shortest day for hiking distance, and it was also the day with the least amount of elevation gain. So despite my pace, we still made it to Champex by lunch time. The day started with a glorious view out of our window - we saw golden sunlight illuminating the peaks and glacier to the west. It was quite spectacular. The entire day had exceptionally nice weather - not cloudy, not humid and not a hint of rain. After a big buffet breakfast in the Hotel Edelweiss dining room, we got a nice early start. We walked along the western side of the valley, just below the base of the mountains. Because we were so close to the base of the mountains, and because we were in a deep valley, we didn't get many views of the Mont Blanc massif. Early in this day's hike we encountered a couple of waterfalls splashing down the mountainside. The Trailblazer guide book warned us: "There is an airy section of path ahead, which some people may find a little unnerving; but there is a chain attached to the cliff to offer a little reassurance." But that scary sounding section of trail is actually a wide level stretch of trail, it is hard to imagine any one struggling to negotiate that part of the TMB. Next we came a sharp right hand turn that led us away from the base of the mountain and out into the center of the valley. We were walking on the top of glacier morraine, a huge heap of stones that had been shoved aside when the Glacier de Saliena had pushed its way into the Val Ferret. Glacier de Saleina has now melted back so far up the mountainside that we never got a glimpse of it. The morraine stretched a long way out into Val Ferret, in a surprisingly straight line. Once we walked down off of it, we found ourselves in a succession of villages. In these traditional small Swiss towns we saw flower boxes, woodpiles and wood framed houses, some of which appeared to be very old, though still maintained in fine condition. Most of the hike on this stage is through the Swiss Val Ferret. This is one of seven major valleys on the TMB - in clockwise order, they are: Swiss Val Ferret, Italian Val Ferret, Val Veni, Vallée des Glaciers, Vallée de Montjoie (Contamines), Chamonix Valley, and Vallée du Trient, which we would reach tomorrow. After the town of Issert, we left the floor of Val Ferret and began the climb to the resort town of Champex. The nice part of this climb is that it is a thick forest, so we had some shade as we hiked upward. Artists have placed carved wooden figures on stumps alongside the trail. It was a good reason to stop every few meters to rest my knee while taking another photograph. At the top of the climb is Champex. The lake there is a beautiful color. It was about lunchtime when we arrived, so we sat beside the lake and ate lunch there. It seemed peaceful. We arrived at the refugio early in the afternoon. The San Diego group was already there. Now there were eight members in their group, they had picked up an additional two who had skipped a couple of stages due to foot problems. We spent much of the afternoon talking with them, which was a lot of fun. They seemed to be a mixture of engineers and occupational therapists. The Australian/British couple (Steve and Kristin) also joined us for some of the afternoon conversation. Dinner was a hearty meal of spaghetti sauce over rice. At our table were two TMB trail runners - they were training to run the marathon later in August. The TMB marathon is held every year - participants must run the entire circuit in less than 48 hours. It seems incredible, but the winning times are apparently in the 21 to 22 hour range to run all 105 miles, including all the passes and descents. Amazing. Panorama Photos
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Click on any thumbnail to begin the slide show at that photograph TMB Stage 8
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