Day Eighteen ~ Monday, May 13

And yet ANOTHER big day! But for real this times. We hiked about 20 km today in about 10½ hours.
We could tell we would start with a big hike up today yesterday, because we could see the mountain as we approached Les Houches.
We were told it was about 2200 feet up. And it was seriously no joke. But it was good. We woke up pretty early, made our way out by 9 and after a lunch shop, hit the trail by 1030. The hike up took us a couple hours, but we made it to just below the top where an excellent hut waited for us to break for lunch at. This was a little before noon. The view was amazing.
The great thing about it, for Hollis said when taking a break, it is important to find a place with a view, an easy set up for lunch and just comfortable in general. It had all of these.
I’m excited to come back in a couple days. But then it was time to go on. From there it was almost all downhill. At first it was quite steep, but then it leveled out and became a gradual downhill.
We ran into a little navigation trouble on the way down. We were so focused on going downhill that we missed our turn into the trail. The detour was only about a half-hour, so it wasn’t too bad.
There was one hill that Natalie, our LoD, started to break down. I shed a tear myself and so did other people. But we made it. At the very end we had one more hill, and when we made it, we all essentially collapsed into a puddle. From there it was 25 minutes of coasting to our destination. Some final navigation had to happen to actually find the place, and this is where some clear frustration surfaced, but again, we made it. And then we had the most amazing pasta dinner with shredded cheese, cheese sauce, some had a red wine sauce. Appetizer was a selection of meats and dessert some sort of blueberry pie. A day well earned.

-Joseph Bruner