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TMB Day 10: Argentière to Chamonix
Distance: 7.74 miles (12.5km) Ascent: 3,554 feet (1,083m) Descent: 1,023 feet (311m) Highest Point: 6803 feet (2,073m) It is done. The Tour of Mont Blanc is complete. One hundred miles (160KM) over ten days in some of the most beautiful terrain on Planet Earth is done and dusted. To say I feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment is an understatement. I’m not going to lie. This was much harder than I imagined. Setting aside the couple of times today I legitimately thought I might kill myself, next time someone remind me to convert meters to feet when looking at elevation gain!! Seriously though. The TMB is always going either up or…
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TMB Day 8: Champex Lac to Trient
Distance: 10 miles (16KM) Ascent: 2,571 feet (784 meters) Descent: 3,287 (1002 meters) Highest Point: 6,505 feet (1,982 meters) Trekking through the misty mountains. And rosti. That’s all. Lol. OK, maybe not all, but definitely the highlights for today. Leaving our charming little hotel in Champex Lac this morning things looked anything but rosy. It had been raining for hours and we delayed our departure till 9am in the hopes the rain would end. When it didn’t we resigned ourselves to the inevitable and geared up with our waterproof jackets, pants and backpack covers. Wouldn’t you know it. That did the trick. Murpny’s Law right? Within a few minutes of…
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TMB Day 7: La Fouly to Champex Lac
Distance: 9.32 miles (15km) Ascent: 1,627 feet (496m) Descent: 1,995 feet (608m) Highest point: 5,281 feet (1,610m) What a lovely day. Probably the easiest, and shortest day on the trek, today was one that can in some ways be considered transitional, but also just a day where unlike most, we had the opportunity to walk through what can only be characterized as quintessentially Swiss alpine villages. Beautiful chalets, hundreds-year old barn houses just waiting to be renovated. I kept thinking these would make an excellent episode of HGTV’s Fixer Upper! There were raspberry patches and adorable chicken coops. I also made a new friend…or two…of the feline kind. And I’m…
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TMB Day 6: Rifugio Bonatti to La Fouly
Distance: 13.06 miles (21km) Ascent: 3,020 feet Descent: 4,403 feet Highest Point: 8,457 feet Today we left our idyllic Italian mountain refuge behind, and crossed into Switzerland. Clocking in at 13 miles, it was the longest day of our trek so far. First, it was down the splendidly beautiful Val Ferret and then up the aptly named Col Ferret. At the top was the “border.” The crossing, as ever, was very official: a pile of rocks with the letter “I” on one side of the rock and an “S” on the other. I did pull out my passport and showed it to the rock just in case 😉 It was…
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TMB Day 1: Chamonix to Les Houches
Distance: 7 miles Elevation gain: 2,675 feet Elevation loss: 5,900 feet Calories burned: 2,300 What a day. There is so much I want to say. Not sure how far I’ll get, because frankly I’m dead. Didn’t train much, if at all for this, which, well, I may pay for in future days. I didn’t speak of this trip much beforehand, because, unlike the Everest Marathon where I had more than a year to look forward to it and plan, I honestly didn’t really believe this would happen until I actually set foot on the plane. Probably explains the lack of motivation to train too. Let’s just chalk it up to…
