French Alps / GR 58 – day 14
Rocher des Marrous – Bobbio Pellice
20.7.2024 Saturday
→ 29,3 km ↑ 1444 m – total 351,3 km
Alarm’s at 6:30am, and it’s 0°C outside. We push it back a while. I don’t feel great. My stomach hurts, and I feel like the last day of the SNP trail (back then I threw up and got through just on water and grape sugar). Looking back now, I think I was dehydrated. The day before yesterday we were definitely dehydrated, and yesterday we didn’t drink enough either, since I never felt very thirsty — but I should have drunk a lot more. I sip water slowly and take some Thai activated charcoal, it will cure anything. I get dressed and go move around a bit outside, up a small hill into the sun.
I have a small coffee and one egg with baguette. I don’t throw up, a good sign. I filter a lot of water, we can’t take today lightly. For about 5 minutes we watch a marmot that isn’t afraid of us at all, moving right past us. It happily eats, grabs a plant with its paw, pulls it close and eats just the flower. The guy camping next to us already left a while ago. We start at 9am. We don’t know exactly where we’ll finish today. Yesterday I checked the forecast, and tomorrow there’s an orange warning for storms and heavy rain. Today’s a beautiful day though, and we have 400 meters of climbing straight ahead to Col de Chamoussière. We get beautiful views and lots of marmots along the way.
We leave our backpacks at the pass and I go up Caramantran hill. Without packs we run up fast, take photos of the views, and run back down.
The crowd at the pass has grown a lot. No wonder, there’s a high-elevation road right next to it heading to Agnel pass, so the climb isn’t too hard and the views are beautiful. People drag bikes up here, and the other side is rideable downhill.
We head toward a parking lot, where we take a break. Luckily there are toilets here too, and today I’m really grateful for that, not feeling fully fit. I have another egg, a piece of baguette and a croissant. We consider hitchhiking into Italy from here, but I’m okay for now. So we continue toward Col Vieux. Not much elevation, but a lot of people. The trail is strictly fenced here because of erosion.
I feel a bit of a chill, so I put a t-shirt under my wind jacket, and it helps right away. From the pass we go down to Lac Foreant.
No wonder so many people are out hiking today. We think about sleeping by this lake too, but it’s good we didn’t, since it’s very busy here and there are protected zones marked off. We move fast toward the next lake, stopping only to drink water.
Just before L’Échalp we take a short break and think through our options. I really don’t feel well now, and if I could hitchhike right now, I would, but there’s no option to. I check tomorrow’s forecast — heavy rain — and look for accommodation in Pinerolo. I find one for €60, camping costs €30, so we agree it’s better to get a bit civilized, do laundry and sleep properly. I don’t book it yet. We have just over 10 km left to the end of the route, in Bobbio Pellice, and one last climb ahead, 500 meters up to Col Lacroix. I really don’t feel up to it, but we have no other choice, so I somehow push through it slowly . I have some grape sugar, and we top up a lot of water in the village. The start of the climb is brutal, but then we enter a wonderful old forest, and walking gets easier there.
We move at a decent pace and the elevation ticks by fast. By 4:30pm we’re at the pass. On the other side there’s already a hint of tomorrow’s rain, the peaks wrapped in cloud.
At least we don’t feel too sad about finishing now. Willy Jarvis hut is 2.3 km away, a proper steep drop that we try to run down gently.
A flock of sheep stops us, no way around them. We wait for the shepherd, since big sheepdogs are guarding them. With a single command, within 10 seconds, the dogs push the sheep to the far side of the hill. The hut, along with a few other houses, sits in a beautiful wide valley. There are camping spots here too, they grow potatoes and graze cows.
We just top up water and continue. Since it’s easy to reach, there are a lot of people here, and we don’t want to spread out our food right by the hut. We stop a kilometer lower by the road, and I eat my third egg with baguette. Quite a few people passed us, so we walk fast to catch up with as many as we can. Some of them clearly ended up in this bit of nature by accident. We run quickly down into the settlement of Bobbio Pellice, where there’s a parking lot, and we plan to hitchhike from there. The third car stops for us, a Volvo with leather seats. I sit in front, since I smell less. The guy’s originally from here, but’s lived abroad for a long time. We talk about how people are afraid to go into the forest because of the animals — it’s a very similar situation with wolves here as with bears back in Slovakia.
He drops us in the village of Villar Pellice, points us to a tobacco shop where we can buy bus tickets, and tells us the bus times too. The last one leaves in half an hour, so we go grab a drink first. The accommodation in Pinerolo isn’t available anymore, so I look for other options. We don’t feel like wandering around Turin much, so I book a hotel in None, a small town before Turin. We catch the bus in time for the last train from Pinerolo to Turin. At 8:30pm we get off in None and walk 1.5 km to the hotel. It smells of urine outside, and inside it looks like something out of a horror movie. An Asian guy greets us, and he can barely speak English. The room’s surprisingly nice though — clean, with fresh-smelling towels, only the shower stall’s a bit falling apart. We’re not that hungry, so Jozef just opens a bag of pretzels. I have three and my stomach starts hurting again, so I switch to just drinking water instead. We properly drank 5 liters each today, and I already feel a bit better. Tomorrow we just travel on to Bergamo. We’ve had quite enough, and we’re glad we ended this trip with a beautiful day in the mountains.
