Somewhere behind Rifugio Bertone - Rifugio Bonetti - Rifugio Elena - Grand Col Ferret - La Fouly
Day 3 - @loulou1987/tour-du-mont-blanc-den-3-r0sv4x
We are waking up into a foggy Wednesday morning. It was pouring the whole night and also now, we have issues to find a slot without rain to pack our tents. It seems we will not have any nice views today.
Finally, it stopped raining for a while and we are coming out from our tents. We are quickly packing our things and as it seems to start raining again soon, we decided to set off and have our breakfast only at next refugio. It is about 2 hours of walking and it is starting to rain again.
The paths are full of mud which makes them slippery and we have to be careful about each step.
As we didn´t have breakfast in the morning, I am almost out of energy, which feels even worse than carrying the heavy backpack. Quite exhausted, we are reaching the refugio to find out it is closed. Fortunately, the owner is so kind that she offers us some tea and coffee but we have to drink it outside. We are fine with that and we are preparing some breakfast. In the meantime, there are other hikers joining us under the small roof and we are chatting with them. Some of them just mentioned that normally, the views from this refugio are one of the best ones. Lucky us, maybe next time.
After the break, we are walking on, descending from the cottage to a valley, crossing streams and waterfalls.
We are catching a weak storm.
However, nothing can stop us from taking photos and after some of them we agree that also photos in this weather are worth it.
As soon as we descend, some of the clouds just disappear and we are getting wonderful views of the mountains again. For a change, there is another neverending ascent in front of us.
We are going slowly, each of us on our own, reaching Rifugio Elena at the end. We are having coffee and some cake.
It is the second time when we realize that the staff in the refuges in Italy is not very friendly. We feel like bothering them. Later on, during our chat with a French girl who we are seeing every day somewhere on our way, we find out that their being distant and unwilling is related to a fear from covid.
After an hour, we are starting our last ascent today. Our target is Grand Col Ferret in 2537 metres. The elevation is 500 metres and I am too exhausted to protest.
We are reaching the top and also the Italian-Swiss borders.
We are descending to the Swiss side and we are all quite excited about being close to the hotel which we booked today to get our things dry and have a shower after 4 days. Still, we have to do 10 km of descent, some of them accompanied by cows.
We are getting to the hotel in La Fouly before 8 pm. We feel a strong relief because we are at a dry and warm place with no rain. We are having dinner and beer and we can´t wait for the shower. I never expected to be so happy about hot water. And the bed and blanket... Unbelievable.
We are just in the middle of our trip, having 97 km behind us.