Mountain Misadventure

Well, if you’ve ever been on a hike with me, you know there are plenty of things that could possibly go wrong*.

So I’d read about this hike in the guidebook, and basically my takeaway from that was “you can ride the gondola all the way back down the like a loser, but you’re on a mountain in Europe, have some pride, put forth a modicum of physical effort, and actually get out there and do something, instead of just snapping a picture from the cable car like every other ungrateful American”.

I feel like most travel guidebooks are written for people at or approaching retirement age, which is perhaps why I got it into my head that this hike was going to be like 45 minutes long. Also key was that the guidebook described the hike as mostly slightly downhill, with a few brief uphills, and since ultimately you’d still need to take the train to get back to the town, it didn’t really occur to me that this might be a strenuous activity. 

Maybe my first warning that things weren’t going to go quite as I had envisioned them should have come at the guidepost, where the posted length for the Montenvers Mer de Glace hike was 2 hours and 15 minutes.

Man, it’s pretty though, isn’t it? And look at all of those other hikers**! If all these people are doing it, surely it must be an activity for everyone.

So this was maybe going to take a little longer than I had anticipated, probably slightly longer than the sign since I’m sometimes a slow walker, but no worries. I was in great spirits, singing Edelweiss in my head and feeling bad for all the chumps on the gondola who were missing this  incredible experience.

Selfie assessment: I think we can all agree this is the best selfie of the trip so far. 

Then the second indication that I was in for an interesting afternoon was when this happened:

RIP iPhone screen. I’m proud of you for surviving numerous drops at the gym, and that puddle on New Year’s Eve in New Orleans, but the granite of Mont Blanc (or whatever mountain this is) was sadly no match for you. You’ll be missed.

The thing is though, I’ve had the phone for more than 3 years, we’ve had a good run, so even the demise of its screen wasn’t enough to get me down. The rest of the phone appeared functional, so I carried on.

Maybe it was all that fresh mountain air, but I was having a great time. I couldn’t believe how beautiful everything was. And green. Like, really, really green. There were flowers in bloom and bees buzzing around, but not hordes of bees or anything, just a few here and there to add to the ambiance. It was all I could do not to stop every 5 minutes to take  pictures like these:

Looking down into the valley.

Looking up at the ridgeline. 

Looking forward at the path ahead.

Weirdly during the walk I’d seen a fair amount of scat on the trail, but no animals (other than the bees). The scat seemed fresh so I wondered if there were animals nearby, maybe further up the mountain that I was missing because, well, because honestly the trail was a little uneven, and I really needed to watch my steps closely. I learned quickly that if I wanted to take a look at something, I needed to stop, and then turn my head. If I turned while I was walking, I inevitably tripped. I mean tripped every time. And there were no guardrails or anything up there, so if I wasn’t careful, I was going down.

So I was paying attention to my steps and everything when I heard a  clanging noise up ahead. I paused, as did the people in front of me, and the clanging grew louder and closer and multiplied. And then, what do we see come around the corner, but a PARADE OF MOUNTAIN GOATS just out for a little stroll.

Comin’ through!

Man, this is the best hike ever!

Though…come to think of it I had been out there kind of a while. Hmm, well, just keep going, I’m sure the end is coming soon.

Ah, yes, another signpost was up ahead, I felt like I had to be at least 3/4 of the way through, well I mean I hoped I was since I’d been out here for 2 hours already.

Huh. Sign says I still have 1 hour, 10 minutes to go.

That is…that is more than half of the hike left.

And those clouds behind me, they were not the innocent white fluffy ones from this morning. They’re looking a little, uh, gray, and menacing.

Okay, well, no way to go but forward, I said to myself, and resolved to stop for fewer pictures and pick up the pace a little bit.

The really cruel part of this sign placement is that directly after it, so just after you realize that you’re not very far along at all, the trail goes suddenly and extremely vertical. So not only are you dragging about how much is left, but you’re climbing up 8 switchbacks, all in a row, muscles burning and lungs completely sucking wind. 

But then you get to the top (almost to the top) and you turn around and there are a few more picturesque goats grazing and you think, “you can do this!”.

I know it looks like a gentle slope, but that is a trick of the camera. It was brutal.

You also think “was that a raindrop I felt? how much would it suck if it started raining while I was up here?”, so then you drag yourself onward.

Maybe this hike would have gone better if I had eaten lunch, instead of just getting a Milka bar*** at the observation deck in Italy, or packed more than one measly water bottle, but no use dwelling on the past now.

I was doing okay and trying my best to keep a good pace going, but the thing that was slowing me down was that the terrain really was kind of rough. There were some sections where the trail was a nice path, but many more where it was nothing more than rocks. So in those I found myself trying to navigate the most level way forward, trying not to step  on loose rocks, and trying to keep my balance so as not to fall sideways off the mountain and tumble down into town.

An example of a rocky stretch of trail. This is one of those “brief uphill” bits I’d read about.

This is probably also about that time that I started getting concerned about the time. Not only did I have the impending storm to worry about, I’d seen that the last cogwheel train down the mountain was at 5:00pm. I’d completed a little less than half of the trail in 2 hours, so at that pace it would take me 4 hours to complete the whole thing. And if I had started at 12:45pm, that meant I would finish at…frankly, a little closer to the last train of the day  than I was comfortable with.

Finally, I went around a bend and could see a glacial valley opening up in front of me. That must be the Mer de Glace, which means the end of this hike must be near. Great.

Literally no picture has ever been taken of any person, anywhere, that more accurately captures their exact feelings at the moment it was taken than this picture right here. (Selfie assessment: perfection.)

It was shortly after this picture was snapped that the battery on my phone died. 

From this point on it was significantly downhill, and while you’d think that would have been good news, I can’t say that it was. Sure, uphill is tough on your cardiovascular and muscular systems, but the problem is that downhill is murder on your joints. And while you can slow things down a little on the uphill to give your lungs a rest, there’s really not any way to soften the blows on the downhill. So my ankles, my feet, my knees- oh my poor knees- they were feeling it.

I finally made it to the train station, which sold a plethora of trinkets and souvenirs but disappointingly no water bottles, and got in line to go back to town. It was 4:15pm. The hike had taken me 3 and a half hours.

Oh, and the gondola to the ice caves had definitely already closed half an hour before.

Met some nice young gentlemen from England on the train, and we chatted for a bit, but I was glad when we parted ways because I wouldn’t have wanted them to see what ended up happening next. As I was walking through town, keeping my eyes peeled for a shop that might sell bottled water, I noticed 2 people standing aside the decorative fountain in the town square. The one guy was taking a picture, but the other guy, he had his hands out and was cupping the water and taking a drink. He didn’t immediately drop dead of bacterial poisoning, and that was good enough for me. I’m not necessarily proud of this, but yes, I filled up my water bottle from the fountain and drank it right on the spot.

You know what though? All’s well that ends well! I trudged back to the hotel, found the strength to put on my swimsuit, and went up to the roof for a well-deserved soak in the jacuzzi. And of course the rain started falling as soon as I walked out on the deck, and of course the jacuzzi water wasn’t even that warm, but no matter. I looked up at the mountains and was overwhelmed with pride, for now I had a visual of how far I’d actually walked, and it really was kind of unbelievable. 

I ended the night with dinner at the Bistrot des Sports, a restaurant that’s been in Chamonix forever. The food wasn’t that great and the service was nothing to write home about, but I didn’t care, because it was in that very restaurant that a couple of Chamonix businessmen came up with the idea for the Winter Olympics, nearly 100 years ago.

Pretty awesome day.

*For a prime example, see the 2015 case of Sarah, Beth & Emily v. Mount Roberts.

**Yes, look at the other hikers. Look at how the other hikers are outfitted. Many have legit packs. Some have trekking poles. I’d find out later that those you don’t see with trekking poles in the picture probably just hadn't taken then poles out of their packs yet. I did not have a pack or trekking poles.

***Which was delicious, I’m not knocking the Milka in any way.