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7am breakfast consisted of juice/coffee, hard boiled egg, bread, cold cuts/cheese, yogurt and cereal. Pretty typical. We packed up and left a bit after 8am. Thankfully the wind had died down. We doubled back, over the bridge, then turned left and immediately started a steep uphill.
Cabane du Combal
Reflections near Cabane du Combal
As we climbed we quickly got great views of the surrounding mountains. The trail climbs about 1800 feet in about 2 miles. As we climbed higher we could see streams and some marmots here and there.
View from the climb
Looking back down at Combal
Some old ruins
Glacial moraine
Stream next to the trail
My only halfway decent picture of a marmot on this trip
We passed what looked like an emergency shelter and kept going. Eventually we made it to the top where we had 360 degree views.
Believe it or not, there's a refuge part way up that mountain (Refuge Monzino)
Mountain and moraine
Hikers in front of the mountain
Hikers in front of the mountain
View from the top
I had read on Facebook about some sketchy sections on the Val Veny balcony. The most recent report seemed to indicate it was no longer an issue, but I was still a bit apprehensive. We were ready with our microspikes if necessary. We wouldn't need them. We passed over four snow patches, but none of them seemed very sketchy at all. We never put on our spikes.
Approaching bench above Val Veny
Descending to Val Veny bench
Val Veny bench descent
Wildflowers
Danger sign
Lago Chécrouit
Looking down past the ski lifts
Now we approached the ski resort area. It became more crowded as we started to see day hikers. We reached Rifugio Maison Vieille, where we stopped for lunch. The bag lunch we had ordered from Combal consisted of just a ham/cheese sandwich and apple and chocolate. Thankfully we had a few other things to supplement, and we bought some chips here.
By this time it was quite warm and sunny and we saw people sunning themselves next to the picnic tables. After lunch we started the steep descent. We could
have taken a chair lift down from here, but decided against it. However, after we descended to the top of the gondola, we couldn't resist taking it the rest of
the way to avoid further punishment to our knees. The gondola brought us down into Courmayeur. From there we walked the town streets to reach our hotel. Note, the actual distance we traveled was 7.8 miles with 4160 feet of descent, but the gondola
saved us about 0.8 miles and 1540 feet of descent.
Descending through the ski area
Courmayeur from the bottom of the gondola
We spent the next few hours wrangling with laundry and buying food for lunch for tomorrow. While at a grocery store we ran into Jerry, who explained they had actually hiked all the way to Courmaeuyer yesterday and had taken a zero day here. They'd be taking the Val Ferret bus and waking all the way to La Fouly tomorrow.
Streets of Courmayeur
We ate dinner at La Terrazza, which was excellent.
When we got out of the restaurant we noticed how much cooler it was. Hopefully it wouldn't rain much tomorrow.
Courmayeur
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