Misty mountain slog

Hot weather, head for the hills. That was the theory as we booked a weekend in Valmorel. We drove up Friday and arrived in the pouring rain. Just a passing front, fortunately, Saturday was forecast to be warm and sunny. And so it was, from time to time. We awoke however to a misty morning.
Every so often it the clouds lifted and tantalisingly promised to clear away, so we stuck to the ambitious plan formulated the previous afternoon - an arduous circuit along the Crève Tête ridge above Valmorel to the east. Perhaps if we'd taken proper account of the difference in height between top and bottom of the walk, we'd have realised it was a little over-ambitious. But we pressed on regardless. Up, and up, and up, and up... 1000 metres up. And about five hours after setting off we made it to the top of the head-buster - Crève Tête, 2342m.

It was tough, but worth it. Magnificent views when the clouds lifted, moody forest scenes when they didn't, and beautiful alpine flowers of every colour & variety everywhere we looked. The video below is a panorama taken at the end of the ridge leading to Crève Tête. And having climbed to the top, it's downhill all the way home.


Exhausted but satisfied we were asleep by nine-thirty. Sunday morning dawned fine and sunny. Faced with a choice of another, less demanding walk, or taking it easy with a swim and a dawdle home in time to watch the Wenger boys on TV, we plumped for the formker. Suckers for punishment. But not stupid, because we caught the Altispace lift and started our walk to the Col de la Madeleine from the top. Lovely weather, comparatively gentle amble, lunch in one of the restaurants at the col, and I persuaded la bienheureuse that a different route might be more scenic.

First mistake. Not that it was more scenic - it was, and we had cowbell music along the way. The mistake was not fully appreciating that the alternative route took us a lot further down. And that meant it was a lot further back up to where we started. Route out: height difference negligible, total up and down - about 150m max, time taken - 2 hours. Route back, height difference the same, total up and down: more than 400 metres, time taken - 3.5 hours. 2nd mistake: a bit of faulty navigation meant we ended slogging up the marshy route of a drag lift. Still, we got there in the end. And the ride back down on the lift was lovely.