Vanoise – day 13
25.7.2023 Tuesday
L’Illaz camping – Val-Cenis
→ 31,23 km ↑ 1633 m ↓ 1960 m
At 1:45am, I wake up to constant lightning across the sky. It’s not raining yet, so I go take down the laundry. Within 10 minutes, it starts raining. Judging by the thunder, the storm’s still 6 km away. Lightning flashes every few seconds. The storm gets closer. It’s pouring and blowing hard. Since the tent walls are a bit see-through, I see every lightning. I cover my head with the sleeping bag, but I still can’t sleep. I don’t remember ever experiencing a storm like this, let alone outdoors. Jozef, of course, barely remembers it, since he slept through it. It passes around 2:30am. So I fall asleep for a bit, but then another one comes, weaker, but it still wakes me up. It stops raining at 5:30am. Our alarm was set for 6am. We turn it off. No point getting up when I’ve had so little sleep and everything’s wet. I get up at 8am, really not feeling like going anywhere today. Once I have sausages and coffee, it gets a bit better. We pack very slowly. We need to clean things that were in the vestibule and got covered in mud and grass from all that rain. In addition, our washed clothes and the tent are still wet. While things dry, I write the blog. We don’t set off until 10:30am, clothes are hanging on our backpacks.
It’s not as hot today and a fairly cold wind is blowing. First we walk 2 km on flat ground. I dawdle, really not feeling it today. Then a climb starts. I change into still-damp clothes, since they dry fastest on me and I don’t want to sweat through my clean “town” t-shirt. We have a fairly steep climb ahead, over 400 meters over 2.2 km. We’re at the edge of Vanoise park and the trail nicely follows a contour line.
Fresh snow is visible on the surrounding peaks. The wind’s strong and cold, Jozef even pulls buff scarf over his ears.
After two hours we stop in a sheltered spot, I upload the blog and Jozef sorts out some work stuff. Meanwhile we eat a whole hazelnut Milka, gone in no time. Good thing we bought a two-pack. Today we’d originally planned 40 km, but because of the late start we changed it to 30 km.
At 3pm we have lunch. Baguette with pâté and onion. I eat it too. Next is another climb. I have plenty of energy from lunch, so I move fast. There are also a lot of forest ants, and I really don’t like those. Once we reach the top, stunning views open up over the glaciers.
It’s genuinely cold here, but we don’t feel like putting on more layers. So we push on quickly another 5 km to the Auberge de Bellecombe hut. We’re there at 5:30pm and there’s a kitten.
The hut looks like something out of an open-air museum, and they make us coffee on the stove in a little moka pot. Outside the hut we put on long trousers, gloves and a rain jacket too. A few drops already hit us. We wanted to detour to Lac Blanc, a 2 km trip, but it’s raining there right now.
We decide to head straight down, hoping to stay dry a bit longer, and the sun ends up shining on us for almost the whole walk down.
We descend almost 1000 meters, but it goes fast. First through the national park with glacier views, then through a pine forest with limestone rock formations.
It reminds me quite a lot of the Slovak mountain Choč. We find a few sleeping spots already, but we’d rather go all the way down, so we can climb straight up tomorrow. We camp next to a paintball field and a stream. We pitch the tent, take a quick wash in the stream, and dinner is mashed potato again. It rains a bit, but luckily no storm. We plan the next few days. We only have 4 days of walking left.
