Reflections on a walking Tour of Mont Blanc (extracts)

The coach pulled out of the station forty minutes late and I tried to quell the niggling fear that I would miss my connection in Geneva, twelve hours from now - telling myself I was on the scheduled coach, and there was nothing I could do to prevent further delays. If we were going to be late, it was up to the bus company to get me to Chamonix-Mont Blanc.

It was still daylight outside and midnight was almost three hours away. I knew I wouldn’t sleep for all that was buzzing round my head, so I downloaded a short story or two to my phone, but couldn’t concentrate on them. I returned the phone to airplane mode and sat back to think about what I had let myself in for: nine and two half-days of trekking and camping alone, an attempt to complete the Tour du Mont Blanc (TMB), one of the world’s Grands Randonées (great walks), with 170km of walking and almost 10,000m of elevation (106 miles, 33,000 ft).

I’m not your ‘typical hiker’, though it’s not for me to say: a middle-aged-and-confused male who smokes (6-8 per day), and enjoys foods high in fat and starch and drinks high in sugar. I have an arthritic condition known as ankylosing spondylitis (AS) which can cause chronic pain, as well as acute. I favour occasional activity over regular exercise, with the odd game of ‘playground cricket’ during the winter, the odd cycle ride of 3-5km and probably no more than 10km on foot per week, much to the frustration of my rheumatologist. I lead quite an active life as a carpenter when I can get the work, but a lazy life whenever my condition allows me to be comfortable. I am not ambitious nor ever have been - mostly content to muddle along, with occasional feverish outbreaks of activity.

Despite my father’s attempts to bring out the boisterous in me, I was never a keen boy scout. He took the family camping every summer, and I always enjoyed that. As I grew older, I went camping with friends; to festivals in the sun and the mud with my loved one; weekending with my children; but going it alone only recently. I do relish the challenge of camping wild and cooking outdoors, whether on an open fire I’ve built myself, or on a gas stove.

I’ve always been drawn to the mountains, ever since I read of Hillary & Tenzing and then climbed the Old Man of Coniston with my family, aged ten. But I never hiked through the mountains with a backpack and tent. Perhaps I might have done at an earlier age, if my father had not been killed when I was eleven.

My mother re-married and I took up cycling with my step-brother. A three-week tour through some of Scotland and Northern England’s highest and steepest mountain roads preceded our 2,500km ride to Lake Geneva and back, in a month’s tour of seven European countries including the UK, all on a meagre budget.

I learned to ski at University, and loved it, but it is an expensive past-time to indulge in, so I rarely get the opportunity these days. After graduating, I found it difficult to reconcile with the prospect of getting a ‘proper job’ as was expected of me, and left home on my tired pushbike in search of a gap year. I rode 1,000km in eight days, only for both me and the bike to burn out in Grenoble, France. Catching the train back to England, I resolved never to rely on a pushbike for holiday transport ever again.

On my return, I walked into a bookshop and was struck by the cover of a book: Wandering, by Hermann Hesse (Picador, ISBN 0330244205). It shows a man stepping through the painting he has made on his prison cell wall, and out onto an Alpine footpath. It resonated with my fear of the nine-to-five prison, so I bought it, on impulse, with the high hope that it might teach me the secret of escape.

Its prose and poetry tell of the middle-aged author’s musings, as with mixed feelings he says farewell to his German homeland and crosses an Alpine pass into Switzerland. After exorcising his contempt for borders and wars, he tells of his love for nature and the rustic life, and of his wistful struggle with life’s contradictions. It carried me away until the moment I looked up from the book, and found myself back in the ‘prison’ again. So no easy answers, no quick fix to my dilemma.

I took several unplanned camping trips with friends before I eventually did get a job, as a delivery driver. Unsatisfied with that, I moved to London and worked in the publishing industry; then to the West Country to marry, buy a house and have children. I worked in printing and nightschooled to learn carpentry. We sold up and moved to North Devon where I took up my new trade full time. When recession hit in the early 1990’s I was made unemployed, until by chance, I was offered evening and weekend work at a second hand bookshop. After years of wandering through life without ambition, I began to think I had found my niche. Within three years I opened my own shop, funded on a shoestring. It went so well that as I developed my business online I saw an opportunity to sell up and move to the Costa Brava, Spain, with wife, two children and 5,000 books. It wasn’t long before I opened another shop there.

The relentless pace of technological progress and the inexorable rise of Amazon decimated the traditional book trade, and they put an end to my aspirations as a bricks-and-mortar retailer. I submitted defeat in 2011 and returned to wood-work.

Several difficult and frustrating years followed, until last August, when I was offered my first wage-paid summer holiday for thirty years.

I wanted to get as far away as possible from the screaming machinery as the timber put up resistance to being cut - or was it the timber screaming at being cut? My wife was working part-time and she wasn’t keen on what I had in mind - camping in the mountains - so I was on my own.

Overnight coaches ran from my home town and could take me to the Alps with only one change, and at a reasonable price. I searched online for some guidance of where I might go once I got there. That’s how I found the Tour du Mont Blanc, a waymarked trail circumnavigating the highest mountain in Europe, with up to three border crossings over Alpine passes!

It was perfect for me: a chance to wander after years of not quite making it. Except, wild camping was not normally permitted in the region, and camp sites were few and far between. Some more research was needed. ...

With only three weeks to organise myself, I needed to buy a tent and a good rucksack, as well as a decent raincoat. With a guide book and map, my total spend on new equipment before leaving amounted to 320€, some of which was covered by birthday gift donations - for the man who has nothing and still doesn’t know what he wants. The rest of my equipment (including walking boots and sleeping bag) was old but usable, and my clothing came straight out of my wardrobe.

The transfer to Chamonix by coach cost me 151€, and I allowed myself 200€ cash to cover camp sites and food.

My first day was wasted through indecision, but I went on to walk ‘anti-clockwise’ from Les Houches, France (near Chamonix), across several passes before arriving in Italy, and continued on to the Swiss border. Crossing from France into Italy had been something special, like entering a new world. Arriving at the Swiss border, however, I crossed into limbo. Visibility was down to about 10m due to low cloud, and some approaching hikers reported they’d seen nothing for miles, so with a sense of anti-climax I turned round and headed back to my camp site.

Allowing for the gift donations and some cash overspend on the trail, my week’s break cost around 600€, or just 379€ not including reusable equipment. It had been an unforgettable adventure and I was determined to return soon with another 500€.

After eleven months of anticipation, the time had come, and from the moment I stepped off the connecting coach in Chamonix-Mont Blanc in the morning, to the moment I caught the return ten days and eight hours later, I would be escaping from the prison cell of responsibility to no one but myself, not forgetting my backpacking companion, Chorkie.

Twilight was upon us as we turned off the motorway towards the city of Girona. By the time we reached the bus station, the city centre sky was dark. The coach went underground, into a crisp concrete maze, deserted at this late hour except for a mother with children waiting to board and a man giving the children a farewell hug. Two backpackers appeared from behind a grey pillar, loaded their packs in the luggage hold and boarded. Once everyone was accounted for and seated, the flickering lights and the waving man were the only sign of life out there - a more depressing place I could not imagine for him to be left in. It was a relief when we came out to where the sky is unbound, even if obscured by light pollution.

.............

I was tired from insufficient sleep and two hours late, so I scooped up my passenger, and we headed North across town towards the cable car station. I walked past the church and tried to pick out the Plan Praz station as it should be right there in front of me, but it was hidden beneath cloud.

The views even from here were appetite-whetting and the ten minute walk to the edge of the town up a gentle gradient provided a pleasant warm-up for what was to come.

The price one way was 14.50€, open return 18.50€. At least I would only have myself to blame if I missed this connection. The potential saving was tempting. I couldn’t be sure of meeting my self-imposed schedule in order to take advantage of it, but perhaps it would enthuse me with extra incentive. For 4€ extra I could have a free ride at the end of my Tour. Chances were, I would be broke in ten days’ time, so I paid the 18.50€, cash, in keeping with the axiom to ‘leave no trace’.

Cars run continuously, so once you have your ticket you get straight on and go. They fit up to six people with bags or skis and I followed two people into one. With their paraglider backpacks already on the floor there was barely room for me to put my pack down. They shuffled up a bit and we made do.

The ride is five minutes, so by 12.15 p.m. I was stepping out at 2000m amsl, and walking uphill to where the Tour du Mont Blanc threads past the head of Plan Praz.

Once I had found the familiar signposts showing the path I needed - to La Flégère 1h 15mins - I looked for a suitable place to stand my gas stove and pan. A dormant ski lift station nearby provided shelter from the wind and I set up on a conveniently-placed concrete ledge. I took out a half-litre bottle of water to make the tea with and was pleased to see it was still half-frozen. All but the lump went in my small saucepan for the boil. The larger bottle in my bag was still 80% ice and would serve to keep refrigerating to the evening.

I had a late breakfast of muesli and milk and prepared a tuna sandwich to follow.

Despite being in the thick of ski stations and pylons, the scenery beyond them was staggeringly beautiful. Paragliders fell and rose again before disappearing somewhere into the valley below – it looked like fun, though I’m not sure I would have the nerve. The Aiguille du Midi cable car station sat precariously on a peak at 3842m amsl, stark against the clear blue sky. It forms part of the second quickest ‘overland’ route between Chamonix, France and Courmayeur, Italy. It can cost a tidy three-figure sum per person and that’s only one-way. The local bus through the tunnel is quicker, and considerably cheaper at 15€ one-way.

Cake and a couple of biscuits followed the sandwich, all washed down with the tea. My legs were ready to go, having spent most of the past eighteen hours scrunched up. Chorkie was belted into a side pocket of my pack and I was on the trail just after 1 p.m.

Once away from the ski station, the 5km TMB path to Refuge La Flégère is green and lush on either side. It weaves in great curves to the left and right along the contours, with gentle ups and steeper downs, towards 1850m amsl.

A number of junctions gave me doubts, and after taking the map out for the third time, I realised it would be much easier to keep my compass to hand and, wherever in doubt, follow a bearing North-East.

The relatively gentle gradients, combined with jawdropping views, made for an excellent introduction to the Tour. I reached La Flégère just after 4 p.m., but the refuge and ski station were cordoned off. Just past it, I made my own diversion and turned left onto a steeply rising path towards Lac Blanc.

According to my reading of the map, the distance from La Flégère to Lac Blanc is 3km. The guide book says it should take 1h 30mins, and by my calculations there are 480m of elevation.

The continuous twists and turns are not clearly shown on the map of course and with an average gradient of 16%, it’s no wonder it felt like I was climbing through mud. After an hour I tested the altimeter on my phone. It barely reached 2020m, meaning I was only just a third of the way. I was not physically prepared for this.

With my heart hammering in my chest, I stopped to catch my breath regularly - to check the map; to take a photo; to soak up the scenery; to give way to oncoming traffic; to take a drink; or any excuse.

Why was I punishing myself this way? I wondered.

When asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest George Leigh-Mallory is reported to have said: ‘because it’s there’. He was a well-educated man, and the son of a clergyman, so his remark could be interpreted as a pithy reminder of mankind’s never-ending thirst to go higher, bigger, and better in all things, for personal or collective aggrandizement; or, simply as arrogant words from an agent of destiny for mankind to overcome and subdue nature.

I chose to go hiking as a means to escape, to get a ‘hands-on’ appreciation of the natural world for its own sake. Adaptations to the natural rhythms of the body, with adherence to the clock and the necessary mechanical activity of blending into society are not healthy. As a smoker, I recognised the value of the fresh air too. Out here there is little or no industrial pollution. The air, like the water, is as pure as it can ever be. Putting my lungs to work in this atmosphere would help repair any self-inflicted damage. It was only after coming here last year that I ‘caught the bug’ and saw an opportunity to challenge myself to achieve something for its own sake, for the self-aggrandizement.

As a child, I was uncomfortable around animals, particularly small ones, and to me, one flower was pretty much the same as any other. I was disconnected on an emotional level. However, on an intellectual level, I learned the importance of all flora and fauna, each with its own unique characteristics, not just for their nutritional or medicinal benefits, but as part of the planet’s own checks and balances. I learned to adore nature for its tendency to be anarchic and respect it as the only thing that prevents us from indebtedness to mechanization and orderliness. Mankind has been fighting among itself and ruthlessly abusing nature for millennia, sterilising wildlife and the land, replacing what was once freely available with synthetic alternatives and calling it progress. The march towards a vegan food diet to protect animal life seems laudable, but I cannot get past the irony of replacing meat products with heavily-processed vegetable protein. It has taken almost one hundred years for mankind to realise the damage being done by plastics, so by the time we come to our senses over the homogenization of all other things natural, it may be too late.

There would be no life without water. And water needs to keep circulating in order to sustain life. It can only keep circulating by rising as a gas and falling as a liquid or solid. If the world were flat, water would be stagnant with nowhere to run. Mountains provide the high points of land from which water can fall in its purest form as rain, gather into rivers, feed everything in its wake, and return to the ocean carrying all forms of debris to be broken down by the salty sea, only to be distilled once again by the action of evaporation.

The mountains are primordial, defiant, yet pliant to water and ice. The bigger or more weather-worn the mountain, the deeper it reaches into me on all levels, emotional, intellectual and spirit. The sense and power of falling water is hypnotic and purifying.

That should be good enough reason for wanting to do this, for why I am willing to lug a heavy pack up and down the mountain trail rather than use my holiday time to lie in the sun by a chemical-filled pool sipping cocktails.

Chorkie may be a safe and synthetic idealisation of one of nature’s wondrous gifts, but he is quite photogenic and he’s here to inject a little fun into my day, to stop me going mad.