August 2, 2024

Auberge la Boerne in Tré-le-Champ to Refuge La Flégère 

~5.1 miles hiked (~2.9 miles on Lac Blanc alternate) 

Despite the storm, I wake refreshed. The campsite is next to a flowing stream, and boy do I love camping next to a flowing stream. It’s so soothing and almost guaranteed to make me fall right to sleep. 

Packing up is wet. Gross. There’s condensation, my sleeping bag is wet at the end, the outside is wet, I had to knock some slugs off in the middle of the night, just, yuck, damp. I get it all packed away as best I can and head inside. 

While I’m getting my breakfast of cereal from the buffet, one of the women working there spots my skirt and enthusiastically asks me what brand it is. I tell her that it was just labeled “Running Skirts” when I bought it at the gear exchange in Bishop, and that I haven’t been able to find the brand online. Later, when I’m coming back in for a final restroom trip before we had out, she enthusiastically pulls me aside. 

“I found the mark!” she says, meaning brand, and pointing to the logo of two women running on the bottom of the skirt. “Look! It’s just called runningskirts.com.” 

I gasp. “Really?” Ever since finding this skirt at the Bishop gear exchange on the PCT I’ve been looking for a new one since this one is falling apart. Sure enough, it’s a whole ass website full of skirts similar to mine. Was I just not persistent enough with my searching? Or has this little company just grown that much since 2022? Either way, I’m thrilled. New hiking skirt for Passport is in the future, baby! 

The trail is immediately uphill today, but we’re not trying to zoom because we aren’t going far. We take our time and stop for a lot of breaks on the way up, largely for strawberries and blueberries. 

At the top we come to a ridge line beneath a rock face with climbers all over it. I don’t really miss climbing itself, but I miss aspects of the climbing era of my life. Watching them navigate up the rock makes me smile nostalgically. But I prefer hiking. Much less horrifying. Better suited to my neuroticism. More berries. 

The trail levels out just before the infamous ladders section. For the last half mile of this uphill, there are a series of metal ladders and rebar railings drilled right into the rock face. It’s like Maine on the AT, but possibly even more vertical. Before we tackle this part, we decide to get comfy and take a good break both to rest and to dry our tents from last night’s deluge. While we sit there, we watch climbers going up the side of a pointy spire right next to us. 

Eventually we feel ready to continue with this challenging part of the day, so we roll up our now-dry tents and collapse our poles and strap them to our packs. We’ll need our hands free for this part. 

In my head, I know the ladders are not actually that far from the rock or from the ground, but it feels much scarier than I expected it to while I was looking at the ladders from the break spot. Yeah, definitely not a climber anymore. I never was suited to being unnaturally off the ground. 

But there is something fun about this part, even though it’s mildly frightening and difficult. It’s like using a different part of your brain as well as different muscles. 

The only frustrating part is having to let big groups pass. There’s not a lot of room to pull over, so we have to squeeze in weird positions to let the oncoming traffic through. Then there’s a group of fasties who insist that we go first but they’re right on my heels the whole time and I eventually allow them to pass once we get through the first set of ladders. 

The first round of ladders is followed by rocky steps, wooden steps, a bar next to a rocky ridge that looks sketchier than it is, and finally a mega-ladder going right up a vertical rock face that looks like it goes straight into the sky. My heart rate probably spiked on that one. 

Somehow, even with the slow progress and the rocky terrain, we make it to the top of this particular climb and take another break. I eat my “pic nic” from the refuge and it turns out to be delicious: pasta salad! 

The weather is a bit sketchy today, with clouds hanging overhead and threatening rain. They still loom as we take the variant trail to Lac Blanc, but apart from some drizzle at the end, we stay decently dry. 

The terrain up here is decidedly alpine and very rocky. Grass in between the rocks, pointy mountain spires looming ahead. Clouds above the entire time, ominous. Before long we pass the Lacs Chéserys on the right and an unnamed lake farther ahead. From there, we can see the Lac Blanc refuge perched on a ledge in the distance. 

It gets steep for the last part of the climb, with some more ladder action made slightly more sketchy because of the rain. But eventually, as is the way of all things, it ends. We have made it to the refuge, situated right on the shore of the turquoise Lac Blanc. 

We chill for a minute and then I order a beer for me, a Coke for Grace, and a bowl of vegetable soup because now that we’ve stopped moving it’s cold again, and also, despite eating the pasta salad, I’m still hungry. Is this hiker hunger? I guess I have hiked almost 400 miles at this point this summer, and that’s when it tends to kick in on longer trails. Or am I justifying? Who cares! 

While we’re sitting there we hear a helicopter come closer, and then it’s hovering overhead. Just behind the building it drops off some supplies and then flies off. So cool to see the helicopter delivery action up close! 

The sky is looking sketchy again by the time we finish our little treats, so we duck into the room where we’ve stored our packs to hide out for a bit. It’s kind of like a shed, with a wooden bench running around part of the room. Our timing is perfect because a couple minutes later, it starts really chucking it down and people come flooding inside to escape it. I’m smashed in a corner with an American couple from California who we saw last night at La Boerne, and we have a pleasant chat for a few minutes about our TMB experiences and the PCT, since they live along it as well. After maybe 10 minutes the rain lets up and we emerge to explore the lake. 

When I say the lake is turquoise, I am not exaggerating. The photos are not enhanced, but they still don’t really do it justice. It is otherworldly to watch the wind rippling across the surface of this water with the craggy peaks in the background and the clouds streaming overhead. 

We admire the larger part of the lake, facing away from the Mont Blanc massif, then walk around the shore to the smaller part of the lake and observe the refuge and the Alpine peaks beyond it. 

I’m at a loss for words here. Ten days in the mountains and I still can’t really believe that I’ve been here walking among these giants. I have been in some beautiful places in my life, but the overwhelming and downright stupid, fake-seeming, AI-like beauty of these mountains washes over me again and again every time I come around a new corner or get to ta new vista. It is real. This place is real. I can see it, smell it, feel it in the wind. It is more real than anything, and that may be why it is so hard to accept its reality.

Back at the refuge, we pack up, re-sunscreen, gather water at the stream, and then continue downhill for two measly miles to reach our last refuge, La Flégère. The clouds are still swirling but they don’t break; we have a sunny downhill walk on rocks and across more ski pistes until we reach our stopping point.

La Flégère is probably the oldest—or at least the oldest-feeling—refuge we’ve stayed in. It has creaky, uneven floors and doors that squeak and bump. But it’s spacious, much more so than La Boerne, though that’s not saying much. There are three bunk beds, six beds, in our dormitory, but they are separated by several feet so it finally feels like we have our own space. 

After showering and writing with a cup of tea, it’s time for dinner. Tonight, mercifully, we’re sitting with English speakers! It’s a group of four traveling together; Lance and Alison, who live in Idaho, and Sam and Rachel, who live in Minneapolis. We have a pleasant time chatting with them, including some reflection on favorite TMB experiences and good-natured SHT bashing with the Minnesota folks. Dinner is a carrot and cucumber sort of salad followed by a potato cheese casserole of some sort with cold cut meats (and a leafy salad in Grace’s case). The crowning glory of dinner is the chocolate mousse. It is thick and whippy and so rich. In one fell swoop it moves to my “favorite refuge dessert” slot—though possibly not higher then the tiramisu in Courmayeur, but that wasn’t at a refuge so we’ll make our own category for that one. Point is: the mousse hits, and I finish dinner feeling profoundly satisfied. 

Grace and I stay up for a little bit writing. But it’s not long before we both can’t keep our eyes open and we retire to our room, which, despite being much more spacious than other dorms we’ve been in, is still somehow sweltering. But the bed is comfortable and tomorrow there will be a hotel in Chamonix, so for now I’m okay with where I am. 

One more day. One more day to hike among these gorgeous mountains. I don’t want to leave, but at the same time, I’m ready to go home. I feel tired, and I’m starting to get stressed out about not having anything ready for the new school year, and I think it’s healthy for me to be in a routine, and maybe also get back on a more normal diet. But if somehow I had a magical way to get more time off, and more money, and I could make my foot pain disappear, I would never stop hiking. After all these miles, all the disgusting clothes and the toiling, this is still my favorite way to be alive.