backpacking | 2sparrows

We had an early shuttle from Bourg St Maurice back to the trail at Les Chapiuex, because we had a big day in front of us to get all the way to Courmayeur – 19-20 miles and 5500’ of climb! We grabbed some breakfast on the way to the shuttle from a local cafe, but I found later my chocolate croissant was missing! 😦

I grabbed a quick coffee in Les Chapiuex, as well as a chocolate croissant to replace the missing one, while the others started out. But after I finished, I jogged to catch Kelly and Kelly and we hiked the 1st few miles together.

Some photos on the road and trail up to Refuge des Mottets, where we’d start our 1st big climb.

The climb to Col de la Segne, the border between France and Italy, had amazing mountain views the entire way. On the way down to the valley, I couldn’t find the water source — in hindsight it must have been up the side trail to a Refugio a bit. But I kept on going, which would later come back to hurt me a bit.

Our friend Jase was going to be in Courmayeur to run the GrandTrail Courmayeur 100k that night, and I started seeing these flags on the 2nd big climb… So I texted Jase to see if we were on his race course and we were!

I also caught up with Scott at the top, so we did the rest of the hike together… down a big drop to a Refugio which thankfully had some water – I had been low for far too long! I Ddrank a lot of water here, and then headed down down down. The ladies would end up taking the chairlift and gondola down from here, as it was an extremely steep 2-3 miles without any views.

We had a couple miles to hike through town to get to our bead and breakfast – Maison La Saxe, which was very nice, though not so easy to find! (All those little streets were a maze and google maps was not very helpful.)