TMB 5: climbing with your teeth
Today was a tough one. We climbed well over a 1000m and descended even more. The track was very broken, just rocks for quite a while, and there was lots of scree.
We went from about 6 to 8 on the clock analogy and there’s no denying we finished the day desperate for a shower and a sit-down.
We started the day coming out of the refuge we stayed in last night and immediately started climbing. And I mean climbing. There is a French phrase ‘gramp avec les dents’ which applied to this morning – we were climbing with our teeth.
We stopped often to catch our breath and have a snack to regain some energy. Lunch, with cheese from the farm yesterday, was at the Bonhomme Pass in glorious sunshine. Then we started downhill – and that’s what we spent a long afternoon doing, going down and down.
The views were great but the footing was far to uncertain for many stops and photos. We felt lucky to come down with tired legs rather than twisted knees. When we reached the valley floor in Les Contamines there was a little bicycle cart selling ice cream and home-made lemonade which may have been one of the most appreciated sights ever.
Evan and Jennifer, so impressed with your doing the tour of Mont Blanc – well done!
My parents did that many years ago – and other alpine walks, staying in mountains huts.
The expression ‘climbing with your teeth’ reminds me of something my father said, which I put in his obituary in the Alpine Journal in 2021: “In 1988 he said he’d been climbing mountains for 50 years: ‘It’s just a hobby. I’m not one of those who hangs on by his eyelids.’ Quite an understatement – he was a mountaineering enthusiast!” We scattered his ashes under Monte Rosa – second peak in Alps after Mont Blanc – last October.
We have looked at my Rosa so often over the last few days.