July 21-22, 2024

0 miles hiked

Many miles flown

When my friend Grace first asked me last November if I wanted to do the Tour du Mont Blanc this summer, I immediately agreed. She was one of several people who had mentioned something to me about the TMB that year, and it felt like a sign. I didn’t know anything about the hike, and it had never been on my list, but it didn’t take much research before I knew I definitely wanted to do it. So we started planning, reserving refuges in the mountains and mapping out the specifics over the winter. It feels satisfying to plan a trip for so long and to finally have it roll around.

The only problem with the timing was that our flight on July 21st coincided with the enormous global IT outage that delayed and cancelled thousands of flights across the world. We were supposed to depart at 6:20, but we got delayed until 10:30. At least Delta told us before we left, so I had a little more time to hang out at home (and play with my family’s new puppy Willow!) rather than having to wait in the airport.

When I did eventually get to CVG, the lines for checking a bag and talking with an agent were long and slow. Grace and I wanted for an hour and a half at the Delta counter (luckily I learned my lesson from the Frontier debacle ahead of the SHT and got there three hours early). When we finally got up to the desk, the woman who had been working disappeared somewhere and told us to go to another line, but the lady working the other line was absolutely frazzled and wasn’t managing rebooking, so she sent us back to the first line, where we waited a little longer until the first person came back. We had to ask her about rebooking our connecting flight to Geneva since we were going to miss it in Paris.

“There’s a later flight to Geneva,” she said, “but it’s totally booked. But it doesn’t matter, just get to Paris and talk to the Air France people. Just get over there, get closer to where you’re going.” She laughed kindly. “You can figure it out there!”

What followed was some chaotic reorganizing of our checked items, wherein I ended up just putting our hiking poles and tent stakes in my enormous pack cover bag and checking those while carrying on the rest of my gear because I was too afraid of losing my luggage. Spoiler alert: The poles ended up being delivered just fine when we got to Geneva, but how funny would it have been if I had to buy yet another new set of poles in Switzerland? Haha. The summer of trekking pole woes.

Security was comparatively quick (although I forgot that in the shuffle Grace put her pocket knife in my pack and it ended up getting confiscated), and we didn’t have a very long wait at the gate by the time we got there. Incidentally, Valerie, my best friend Monica’s mom, was on the same flight as us because she was trying to get to Madrid. We chatted for a moment as we got in line. And then we boarded and got settled in!

The flight felt very short because I mostly slept. I also watched most of Oppenheimer, but it was an ambitious choice given that when we took off it was nearly midnight. There was the very specific delight of airplane dinner and free wine, which caused me to be even more sleepy, and then airplane breakfast, and before I knew it we were landing in Paris.

Man, I will just never get over flying. I have been on so many airplanes in my life and it never gets old or any less impressive that humans figured out how to make metal tubes go wheee through the sky and land safely in another place. And when we landed in Paris there were so many enormous airplanes and I just ogled at them, wondering where they were going and where they came from and how that hunk of metal could get up into the sky. Physics!

When I checked the Delta app upon landing, I discovered that we had been automatically rebooked on the 4:15 flight to Geneva, which was now miraculously not full. But, given the airport chaos, I didn’t really trust that this was true, so once we got into the airport we waited in yet another long line to talk with a Delta agent, who confirmed our flight and that we did not have to re-check our bags. We did have to go through security again though, and then customs, at which point we got very clear stamps in our passports, over which I obsessed for a few minutes.

We confirmed that our gate existed, got some lunch, and then I lost my mind a little in a gift shop that had an overwhelming volume of Paris 2024 Olympics knickknacks. The mascot is, I take it, supposed to be a Phrygian cap, which was a symbol of liberty during the French Revolution, but in actuality he kind of just looks like a red poop, and I love him. I wind up with a hand sanitizer bottle that has a holder with the mascot on it, which I plan to use and treasure as a thru-hiking staple for many hikes to come.

Our flight was delayed a little longer, so we wandered around observing the birds that were somehow in the airport (Grace: “Well, there are some actual trees in here so I guess this isn’t a bad airport to be a bird in!”) and then sat down by a wall and played a round of mini Uno until we started boarding. This flight was NICE. I got a window seat and for a “snack” they served a wee sandwich of bread, cheese, and some sort of spread, which was indicated in the wrapper as being made in France. Bless the French for their food, even in airplanes. The views as we landed in Geneva were lovely, with farms giving way to rolling hills and a city on the edge of a lake.

The baggage claim situation was strange—there was a claim for the French sector and a claim for exiting in Switzerland (Me via text: “What an odd place.” Grace in response: “How neutral!”). I accidentally walked past the first one and ended up at the Swiss side, which was second, so Grace got our pole bag first and met up with me at the lower side. We picked up a sandwich to go for dinner, caught our bus, and made our way to Chamonix.

The world was growing darker as we got closer, and the mountains got progressively larger. I was in and out of consciousness, but I did hear some guys a few rows back talking about the PCT. One with an English accent: “Yeah, I heard about those trails in America! Like, what’s it called? The PCT? Yeah, the PCT. That’s amazing to me. Like what, 2,000 miles? That is crazy.” Grace and I shared a little knowing smile as we eavesdropped. I’ve done that, mate, I wanted to say to him.

In Chamonix we had to wait for one last bus to Les Houches. At the bus stop we met and talked with two guys from Cleveland and one from Germany who had just finished the TMB. They gave us some information about places to go and places to avoid, and though it was late and I was exhausted from this long travel day, I started to feel myself getting genuinely excited about the hike. The bus arrived, fifteen minutes later we were finally in Les Houches, and when we checked into our funky hotel, RockyPop, and got into our small but comfortable room, it took all the effort I had to make myself shower before I fell asleep.