French Alps / GR 58 – day 11
Refuge de Furfande – Col Girardin
17.7.2024 Wednesday
→ 32,7 km ↑ 2171 m – total 265,4 km
Alarm’s at 6:15am again, but I really don’t want to get up today. I feel very tired. It’s 1°C outside with frost on the grass. I stay warm in the sleeping bag as long as I can. To force himself up, Jozef deflates his sleeping pad and packs away his sleeping bag. I just quickly run out to pick some wild thyme for tea and dive straight back into my sleeping bag. Now he’s freezing outside instead of having a nice warm breakfast. I warm up my clothes inside the sleeping bag before putting them on. I get dressed reluctantly, since Jozef keeps pushing me. I pack quickly. I’m wearing maybe 3 layers plus gloves. By the hut I still need to fold up my sleeping pad, brush my teeth, wash my face and use the toilet. Jozef waits for me there impatiently, even though these are all completely normal things and don’t take me long. Then he starts acting like a little child, saying he wants to leave, that he’s cold. Well, he shouldn’t have deflated his pad right away then, and now he’s rushing me. I don’t even get to do my hair. We leave in a hurry, and I hate it.
I’m in a bad mood, tired, no coffee, hair a mess, and I really don’t feel like walking today. I walk like I have no soul left. After 10 minutes we take off some layers, and he tells me I can even do my hair now, he’ll wait. I’m still in a bad mood though. He asks if he should make me coffee or if I want a nap, but these questions just annoy me more. If he hadn’t rushed me so much this morning, everything would’ve been fine. He can’t stand looking at me anymore, so he walks ahead. Finally a good idea. I walk at my own pace, sort my thoughts out a bit, admit I’m overreacting too, and try not to take it so seriously. My mood doesn’t change with a snap of the fingers, but it improves a little. All this happens during 2 exhausting hours of descending 1100 m over 6.6 km. He waits for me down by the road, where we have some chocolate. A Belgian guy catches up with us, someone we keep passing on and off for the second day now. He asks where we’re heading and shows us a few alternative routes. They look interesting, maybe we’ll change today’s plan. We now need to climb straight back up what we just went down, almost the exact same numbers. There’s a hut 1.5 km away. We only find a repairman there, but he says it’s open. So we look for someone to make us coffee. We find an older lady, and I order two coffees — I can manage that much in French. I want cake too, but after a lot of explaining with my hands, we work out they don’t have any. They do have 4 pretty chubby cats though. Coffee plus cats, my mood improves a lot. I still feel tired, but that’s fine, I’ll just go a bit slower. We keep climbing. There’s a sign in the village saying the water isn’t drinking water, so we move on right away. There’s water at the next settlement too. It’s getting really hot.
We pass several hikers, average age 60+. It still amazes us how many older people hike here. And I don’t mean a stroll in the woods — I mean with a backpack, poles, properly uphill. We take a longer break by the water. We drink a lot and eat baguette with pâté. A man stops by and asks if we’re doing the loop around the national park. He loves it here, says it’s a really beautiful part of the world, and tells us to enjoy it.
We continue with our umbrellas up, the sun’s really strong. Surprisingly we get through the 1000 meters of climbing fairly fast, thanks to all our breaks.
We have 4 km downhill to the town of Ceillac. We’d assumed it was a proper town. Turns out it’s a tiny village with one grocery store and two bakeries. We arrive at 1pm, when everything’s closed of course. The Belgian guy sits in the shade on the square, so we join him. We meet Pierre, who finished his loop here today. We swap Strava (a sports social network) and chat about hiking and different countries. I want to write the blog, but I’d rather socialize a bit instead. Pierre’s staying in this “town” another three days, and we’ll be back here tomorrow too, so we’ll see him again. We go shop for two days and grab another coffee. We eat lunch just outside town in a shelter. We set off again after 5pm. We have several possible sleeping spots picked out along the route, but we want to get as far as possible, meaning 12 km with over 1000 m of climbing. The first 2 km are on asphalt, then a fairly brutal switchback climb begins, 500 meters over 2.5 km. We power through, the trail’s busy so it’s in good shape. We reach Lac Minor. Views open up over the surrounding peaks.
A few people are already camping by this lake. We continue on, now a gentler climb, to Lac Sainte-Anne.
If we didn’t have so many kilometers to cover tomorrow, we’d camp right here, it’s beautiful spot. About 10 people are camping here already.
Surprisingly, we find Pierre here too, who we thought was staying down in the village. He wanted at least one more night up in the mountains. We swap numbers and agree to grab a beer tomorrow evening. We keep climbing toward Col Girardin, with beautiful views from the top.
From the pass we go down just a few dozen meters to a perfectly flat area. There’s a lot of sheep droppings around, but we find a clean spot and pitch the tent. We covered 11 km with 1000 m of climbing in 3 hours — a very different pace from this morning. There’s also a very well-fed marmot grazing close by, and it’s barely afraid of us.
I go wash up right away, and get water from the spring just below. Dinner is chicken soup first, then rice with tuna! We found a pre-cooked one at the shop, just needed heating up. A nice change. It’s been a tough day, so I skip writing and go straight to sleep.
