Tour du Mont Blanc:
over the Col du Balme

We got away from La Flegere before 8am; this was to be the longest day of the trip, with 19 kilometres or so to walk. The track goes down and up as it sidles along the mountain, with views over the valley below. There's one stretch with ladders, but nothing at all tricky. We saw marmots and goats, and something that might have been a pine marten.

Descending to the road near Argentiere, we stopped at Auberge La Boerne, where we had drinks and the friendly woman made us up ham and cheese rolls (with very nice ham) for lunch. Then Carol and Nathaniel headed for the more direct route via Le Tour, with less climbing — especially for Nathaniel, who took the cable car! — while Mark and I went up the Aiguillette des Posettes.

This was a nice climb and I slowed Mark down by getting him to talk about financial risk management and regulation. It was windy, however, and started to rain near the top, so it was a bit bleak. We had lunch in the limited shelter of some rocks, then walked around to the Col du Balme in fog, to sound of cow bells.

We had drinks in the hut there — the woman serving us was every bit as grumpy as previous reports suggest — and then headed down to Trient. It cleared a bit, with some nice views, but settled down to solid rain towards the end, so we were happy to reach the Relais du Mont Blanc.

This was fairly crowded, but we had a four-bed room to ourselves, and we had time before dinner to shower, and do some laundry, and buy lunch for the next day. Dinner was nice soup with bread, cheese, salad plate, some kind of beef goulash with mash.

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