11.16 miDistance
2,202 ftElevation gain
1,547 ftElevation loss
6 h 38 mTime
A donkey woke me up today. It started braying at 6:00 am, and I'm pretty sure it woke everyone up at the campground as well. I slept with white noise playing all night long. It got too hot in the room as well, and I was sweating all night. Annoyingly my phone didn't charge overnight, which meant it might die while on trail today, which would then mean no photos! Luckily it didn't.
I ate my "breakfast" from yesterday on the baclony while watching the sunrise over the mountains. I headed downstairs and went about packing up my backpack in the hotel lobby. I met up with the others at the campground, and all of us minus Peter and Tyezet (they had gone ahead already), set off around 7:00 am.
Right away the trail started going through some nice woods, and this was a nice easy way to start the day. The path was flat for nearly 3 miles! The woods also had plenty of open areas that gave us pretty views of the mountains around us. Even when we had to start ascending, that portion wasn't that bad either.
The four of us, at the top of one of the ascents, paused and took a group photo together, and then took a break in some shade nearby. Cows started to move in though and that meant that it was time to keep going. The trail now started going over exposed rocky hills, and zig-zagged through rocky columns.
We chose Lord of the Rings characters for ourselves because each ridge crossing reminded us of the first movie montage scene of them traversing over the mountains. I was given Aragorn, by Charlie, and Sophie called herself "Bran the Broken" due to her muscle issue. Apparently she was a huge George R.R. Martin fan and I told her my partner and her would get along swimingly. Sophie's leg issues though got worse throughout the day.
The rocky hillsides gave way to lush green hills and as we came over the summit of these hills we saw a pristine-looking mountain lake called Lac de Nino. As we descended down the trail from the tops of the hills we discovered that the lake was actually surrounded by a bog, and it was tricky walking across it and making sure we didn't step on a soft spot and fall in. There were already some large holes in the surface that gave us a peek into the watery depths below. We didn't swim in this lake though, it wasn't as pristine as it looked from up top, it was quiet dirty in fact. We took a short break on some boulders along the waters edge before setting off again.
Thankfully the trail was flat once more for a few miles as its stone-white path cut through the bright green grasses around it. I was walking a little faster than the others and had pulled ahead. I didn't realize the others weren't close behind me until some time later, so I took a break and waited in the shade of a lovely tree for the others to catch up. When they did Sophie was in tears, saying that the hike was over for her due to her leg issues. Charles ended up taking her backpack and wearing it on this front while his remained on his back.
We made it to the next establishment along the trail, another Bergerie, and ate some really really hard bread and tried to wash it down with more Orangina drinks. Charles and Sophie had to decide if they wanted to stay at this place, or keep going. Dennis and I convinced them to keep going, and we split up her stuff so that Charles wouldn't have to carry most of it. With her backpack empty we set off across the open plains ahead of us and made our way to the originally planned place we were going to stay at. We all made it there together, in one piece.
The host wasn't very nice when we went to check in and order our meals. We set up our tents on spots that Peter and Tyezet had saved for us so that we could all camp together, those guys are the best! We noticed thought that cows kept walking through the camping area, nicking some tents along the way with their horns, so we rigged up some spare rope and rocks and made a sort of fence to try and keep them out of our little circle.
There was a river flowing next the refuge, with some wide flat areas that were ideal for chilling in the water, and we took advantage of it for a little bit.
The refuge dinner was simple but filling. They're all mostly pasta and red sauce with bread, a meat, and a dessert. The setting sun covered the eating area and it was a very hot dinner. It started to get chilly and we all retreated to the warmth of our sleeping bags in our tents. My feet have so many blisters, and I am running out of gauze wrap and bandaids.
