Tour de Mont Blanc 1
There are many ways to do the Tour de Mount Blanc, so let’s be clear we are chopping out some of the boring bits. We got the local bus down the road this morning and then a cable car up from Les Praz – we could have walked up I suppose, but only a dedicated completionist would contemplate that.
We were amongst the clouds when we set off from the cable car and couldn’t see the surrounding mountains. We soon started to get misty glimpses through the clouds and to walk past snow banks still resisting summer. We saw marmots and mountain ibex, which was just thrilling.
Just before lunch at Lac Blanc the clouds started to burn off and the views just got better and better. Mont Blanc was finally there, towering behind a foreground of lakes and green sward. Our lunch was at one of those spots that simply doesn’t look real.
After lunch it was a long downhill haul in the sun, with more ibexes and a walk through a pine forest.
We went up about 500m today and then over 1,000m down – which is a fair bit of hill walking. The trails were surprisingly rocky and uneven. But the views were simply stunning.
