Tour du Mont Blanc Day7

Trail Day7 (15 km, +1199m, -1400m)(9.3 miles,+3933ft, -4593ft)

 

From Arpette campground, we headed for Fenetre d”Arpette. Fenetre d”Arpette is the highest point of the TMB, but the least popular point of the TMB. The reason why people avoid it is that the path is unclear, contains unstable boulder climb and walking uphill on the snow patches (see the picture)

 

You can see how the path to the pass looks like in the left picture. V shape over the snow patch is the pass. The point I took this picture is in the middle of boulder section. It was the hardest section of the TMB, but it made people avoid this portion. In result I really enjoyed the remote area.

 

Now this picture in the left was taken after the snow walking section. The view was amazing all the way.

Considering that most TMB hikers miss this part, I feel great, because I know this TMB’s secret spot.

The moment I reached the top, the giant glacier view came into my eyes. The Glacier du Trient wowed me.

I thought, “How lucky I am I can see such a beauty at the top of mountain!”

This route is not recommended on bad weather. Luckily this day’s weather was perfect. 

 

After having lunch at the pass, we started descending.

It was nice to walk seeing the massive Glacier du Trient. It was unusual experience to see glacier structure (above picture). This made me want to climb on the glacier mountains.

It is still very big, but it is quite obvious that glacier has been shrinking fast. As you can see in the left picture, all the rocky part used to be covered with glacier. It is scary to see how quickly the change is happening.

In Europe, signs to indicate destination are written with time (hr/min) not actual distance (km). At the pass there was a sign that said 2 hours to day10’s campground area. However, descending for 4 hours, trail was still going downhill. We knew we needed to go to the bottom of the valley. After all we took 5 hours to reach the campground. It took long because some portions the trail was washed out and we had to do some crazy off-trail, and trail was not well maintained. Everyday +/-4000 feet was tough. That reminded me of Mr.S2 who had knee issues and had difficult time with steep ascending and descending at our Grand Canyon trip. He might have difficult time at TMB, but hope his knees are well recovered by now. 

We finally arrived at the campground in Le Peuty. In France, they use articles even for town names, hut names, and surprisingly for normal houses. The name with an article is written on a house. Articles drove me crazy in France.

The campground is in the yard of a hut. The hut owns a baby cat (American short hair). The owner called the kitten Murphy. She is very energetic and running around all over the campground and I saw she was climbing up and down bunk beds at hut.

It is funny that some hikers completely ignored the cat and sometimes hikers stop and pet a lot and saying "so cute!".  Often female group stop and pet, which is kind of predictable. One nice thing I saw was one single male hiker, who was walking really fast and giant pack without smile stopped for Murphy and pet a lot. This was unpredictable and made me feel good.

 

It was unexpected to see many cats during the TMB. Yay! In the right picture you can see white and red sign which is for TMB. 

 

 

 

TMB７日目 (15 km, +1199m, -1400m)

この日はアーペッテの山小屋の庭キャンプからスタートしてアーペッテの峠を越える。ここはTMBでの２つのルートのうちの一つ。９９％の人は平坦なコースを歩いたのでこのアーペッテの峠に登る人はほとんどいない。確かにトレイルはわかりにくく、スクランブルの場面もある。そしてきつい。さらに雪が残っているので雪の上も歩く必要があった。

しかし！振り返ると、はっきり言ってこのセクションがTMBでのお気に入りだ。ハイカーはおらず静かで壮大な景色が続く。なんて荘厳なんだろう。

そして頂上に着くと反対側にそびえるトリエント氷河が現れた。うわー。巨大だ。今まで見た中でも一番か２番の巨大さ。パタゴニアでも巨大な氷河を見たが、それと匹敵する。感激した。

そして麓のキャンプグラウンドを目指してテクテクと下って行く。頂上でのサインでは麓まで２時間と書かれていた（ヨーロッパでのサインは距離ではなく時間で書かれている。人によって歩く速さは違うのでどうかなとは思うが。。。それに大抵書かれている時間はかなり速いハイカーのように思われる。）２時間ならわりとすぐだなーと思いつつ下って行くが下りが長い！結局５時間かかった。そこまでゆっくり歩いていたわけでもないのに。。。まぁ途中で氷河に見とれていたりした時間はあったが。

そして麓で山小屋の庭でキャンプ。巨大なトリエント氷河を今度は下から見上げることになる。どこから見ても壮大で圧倒される。

そしてここではグレーの子猫が！ほとんどのヨーロッパの山小屋はネズミ対策なのか猫を飼っている。この子猫（山小屋の人はマーフィーと呼んでいた）が超アクティブで走り回っていて猛烈にかわいい！疲れも吹っ飛んだ！そして山小屋の簡易シャワーを浴び、キャンプフードを食べ就寝したのだった。