Mohammed is going to her Mountain.

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Day 1, Aug 25^th

Hi ho Hi ho it’s off on another adventure I go….

This was written back on Friday Aug 28th, however my lack of internet has kept me from posting until now. However, I shall send it out, and continue on with the journey while I sip wine and eat homemade guacamole from our balcony over looking the Cote d'Azur :-)

I love flying. No really. (can you see the sarcasm dripping from the page yet?) In true Ned’s World fashion, I was randomly chosen at security for ‘additional screening’. Year to date I’m at 100%!r(MISSING)andomly chosen. Pretty cool huh!? It is all computer generated apparently, I think they lie, but cant prove it :-)

Second leg has commenced; my flight from Edmonton to Amsterdam was uneventful, which is perfect in my world! Always fascinated by how the airlines feel the need to ‘adjust’ your clock by feeding you 2 into the flight, followed by waking you up for ‘breakfast’ 2 hours before you land. And the flight is only 8 hours long – I need some sleep pretty please!



Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam is large, but easy to navigate. Other than their slightly backwards way of doing things (in my mind), land, go through security and any liquids you have are now thrown out (that I’ve experienced before in LHR), get patted down. Then you are free to roam the entire airport, eat, drink, be merry, and drop off packages at random should you choose. But then when you want to go to terminal “B” you have to go through customs. I didn’t know if I was entering or leaving the Netherlands truthfully, just flat out random.

Passed 3 Starbucks on my journey to meet Michele, broke down on the third one, not bad for an addict!



SO good seeing her again, both a little disheveled, a little jet lagged but chatting up a storm. I met Michele in Nepal on our trek to Base Camp and we became fast friends. Since then we have kayaked around Cape Breton, done the Ottawa Half marathon twice, trekked the “W” route in Patagonia, got drunk New Years Eve on Easter Island and now this. She is a fabulous traveling companion, and I’m very excited to be doing this trek with her.



It is just over an hour bus ride to Chamonix then we are at our little mountain village called home for 2 nights before we embark on a journey not soon to be forgotten. Still nervous, still excited, and while ‘this’ Mohammed had to travel to go to ‘her’ mountain, I fear ‘she’ may still get the best of me. Then again I’m never one to back down from a challenge. I will commence with trepidation; unpacking and repacking my bag a couple times before I leave, as we have no porters. We are covering 140 km in 7 days of trekking and one rest day and far too much elevation gain/loss to admit to. And the best part? I paid for this! HA!



Day 2, Aug 27^th I believe, who knows, always get confused by dates and times when traveling. Aug 25^th I got up at 5am in Edmonton, ran around like a chicken in search of her head, then took a car, plane, foot, plane again, bus and arrived in Chamonix, France with my dear traveling companion Michele.



To my horror I discovered that I left Mr. Pickles at home, and seriously considered asking Lisa (my house sitter) to express post him to Nice for me. I can’t believe I did that to him, then again, I actually have a human traveling companion this trip so I guess Michele will ‘have to do’. But I have not done a trip without him for a long time, will miss his little horns sticking out of my camera bag!



I envisioned Chamonix to be similar to Canmore or a Whistler type setting and I couldn’t be more wrong. It is this largish village literally surrounded by these intense mountain peaks and you feel like you have stepped back in time. It’s rustic, Sound Of Music like (even thought I know that’s from Austria I can’t think of a better comparison), Heidi like. Awesome! It literally took my breath away. What I love so much is that you see lush, lush green, then the tree line is this abrupt ending, and these ferocious spires of sheer rock jut out of them. It’s such an intense change in the mountain face and I’m blown away. We were blessed with a view of this from our room, who would want to leave here!

Mmmmmm coffee number 2 (they are small here) and I just inhaled a fresh croissant. OMG I’m going to have a stomach ache for days (can’t eat butter anymore) and I will become Vanilla’ Ice’s fav lady if I eat these things (I like big butts and I can not lie…).

Today we are exploring Chamonix, what’s neat is there is a Ultra Marathon event going on (http://www.ultratrailmb.com/en/ ), with multiple distances and different starting points as well, but all more or less circumnavigating Mount Blanc. Made Michele and I feel a bit silly whining about how hard our trek is going to be OVER 8 days when some of these nut cases are doing it in 2, by themselves and a wee pack of water and some gels. Yikes! Perspective is everything.



Chamonix is literally exploding with people, we are 2km out of the main square (which is nice as it’s quiet) and there are buses and a train we can take to town for free. Love seeing all the booths set up for the ultra athletes – the best one was “What colour is your pee”. LOL gotta love hard core athletes! Welcome to France; drink water.

Speaking of drinking, we had a glass of wine on our patio last night and when we asked the waitress for a recommendation she said she has a great red wine from Argentina. I burst out laughing, much to the confusion of our server, but thought, ah life is good! Had dinner and made it to 9pm (almost, our goal was 9, I made it to 8:50 and Michelle 8:55) before we both passed out from exhaustion.

One thing I can say; this is going to be epic!

Day 2 con’t:



Spent the day going back and forth from Chamonix to little town next to Chamonix. It’s only about 2.5 km, but going back and forth added up quickly. We figured that accounted for our warm up for the trek!



Michele decided to go paragliding; what a perfect place to do this! I just chilled out when she went, as beautiful as it is’ spending $113 Euro was out of my planned budget, and given that the view would be spectacular, but the parachute ride meh (for me) I opted not to.

Chamonix has it’s Whistler/Banff moments, lots of restaurants, coffee shops, and is an outdoor clothing store mecca; but still the surroundings are truly spectacular. With the Ultra Marthon’s going on (there are multiple races) this town is exploding at the seams. But watching the top athletes come in around 31 hours, and then continuing onward has been amazing. Cheering everyone on, and waving them in, has been super cool. The next race started coming in early afternoon, it was ‘only’ 54km so both groups still came in throughout the day. City was vibrating, so we just walked around and absorbed the atmosphere.



Met Clair our group leader, she is a licensed mountain guide, and apparently France is quite, ahem, anal about how things are done, so while we are in France we are to stay near to her, whereas in Switzerland and Italy if we are a bit more sprawled out, she is not as concerned. I guess they will periodically stop people and ask who their guide is, and if you are not close to her, it’s a bit of a no no. Makes me wonder if you can not do MTB on your own. We are skipping some of it (the start from Chamonix and a part near the end (cutting in instead of doing the wide loop) but I am so OK with that. 127 km (according to G Adventures, but more on that later), I was wrong, but an average of 1200 metre elevation gain AND loss EACH day. Summit day (if you can even call it that) is only 8700 feet, but the up and down, wow.







OK, packed, nervous, have to leave internet and computer behind, and reading book. Dear god; how will I entertain myself? Oh, wine. Sweet blissful wine J

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Photos

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Can't start a journey without wine!

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View from our hotel room in Chamonix

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Set up for Ultra Marathon Runners