We decided to skip the 9th stage between Tres le Champ and Trient, because we were both getting somewhat bored. Even though the scenery was still incredibly beautiful, we seemed to have become somewhat desensitised to its beauty. It just felt repetitive and since we were doing this for ourselves and didn't need to prove anything to anyone else, we made this decision with a clear conscience.
We caught two trains and a bus to Col de la Forclaz in Switzerland, which took just under an hour, and walked the last part of the TMB to Champex Lac. The trains and busses in the Chamonix valley are free for everyone staying there, which is very convenient.
The first part from Col de la Forclaz was a roughly 500m ascent to a place called the Bovine. It was true to its name and had a big herd of cows with the biggest bells we've seen so far. Their bells were bigger than my head! The place also smelled the part 🙊
What followed was a reasonably steep descent where we came across some annoying American hikers who decided to rest on the already very narrow and steep path. Around 13:00 we came to the saddle where we had lunch and then walked for another hour and a half uphill to the finish line. The last 30 minutes or so were again over concrete paths and roads, which was hard on the feet.
In Champex there also happened to be a bike race. The finish line was exactly where we came into town and there was a little band playing. Naturally we assumed this was for us. Jack had a celebratory swim in the mountain lake, which he found very invigorating. We then had two beers to celebrate and picked up our car. Since it was standing in the direct sun and it was warm for the last few days some of our stuff was well melted. Like the paint on some of our sunnies 😮 all of our reserve chocolate was also nicely hot and squishy.
We then drove to the town of Trient where we had our accommodation reserved for the night. It was a private apartment with our own bathroom and felt very luxurious after last night's attic. I was so excited that I must've spent 40 minutes in the shower. We sorted our gear and clothes and had dinner.
146km, 9 days, 3 shared dorms, 5 shared bathrooms, 1 hand organ, 3 ibex, 1 cold, 4 new insoles, 1 rainy day, 4 Cols, 1 Mont Blanc, 3 goats and 1 snake later we completed the Tour de Mont Blanc. And it was great! 🎉
Highlight of the day : going through the finish line.
Lowlight of the day : dinner in our hotel was pretty crappy compared to some of the other ones we had on the TMB. But really overall it was a very good day.
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