Walking in the mountains

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After a pretty decent French breakfast, coffee, croissants, cheese, jam, and more coffee, we decided to make more use of the cablecar passes to access some good walking. Not as high as yesterday, but yesterday we were well above the snow line and we do not have the gear for walking on ice. Equally neither of us have acclimatised to altitude so staying below 3,000 metres was probably a very good idea if we were going to be taking potentially tough exercise.

Two connecting cable cars took us up to Brevent at just over 2,500 metres. A little below the snow line though there were some large patches of ice and snow in places. Initially there were some lichens on the rocks but not much else. We dropped back on foot to Planpraz (which is where the initial two cablecars connected), at 2,000 metres, following footpaths and at times the bare (snowless) pistes. There were some great views of Mont Blanc across the valley and slowly we came to alpine meadows with many flowers, larks singing, crows, the occasional hawk of some kind, and many bees. It was meant to be about 1 hour but it took us a bit longer, mostly because we kept stopping to take in the views.

There were also some good views of people parascending, which I though would be fun, Hilary has other views.

After Planpraz we set off for Flegere, supposedly another 2 hours, but again it took us a bit longer, mostly walking in alpine meadow, with some dips at times below the tree line, pines mostly and some mountain birch, and the odd loose rock slopes to cross. At times we could not see or hear any other human activity. The only noise being birdsong. We got to Flegere just before a thunderstorm rolled in which delayed the cablecar back down.

It was a pretty tough mountain walk which took us about 4 hours, the paths were well marked though rocky and steep at times, and the scenery is fantastic. Well worth it.

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