Jun/070
Refugio Bonatti, Tour du Mont Blanc
Sarah's brother Andrew was in town this weekend. We went hiking in Italy on part of the Tour du Mont Blanc. The plan wa perfect. Leave the car in Courmayeur and walk up to the Rifugio Bonatti, staying in the hut overnight, walking back down the next day. Each way was probably just under 20km with a height difference of 1000m.
It was a really lovely 2 day hike. Much further than I'm used to walking, but I'm starting to see my fitness improving a lot just living here in the valley. We started around midday on the first day and reached the Bonatti hut around 5pm. It's the coolest place to stay ever, great views of the Massive Du Mont Blanc across the valley and for 40EUR you get a comfortable bed for the night, a shower, a 3 course dinner and a bit of breakfast before heading off again in the morning. After a couple of litres of red wine between us and a day walking up a mountain we were all asleep by 9:30pm with the noisy Italian's conversations ringing in our ears. Something about Italians - they're such lovely people, so friendly and happy but they just NEVER stop talking!
We were off again by 8:30 this morning. Taking a different route further up through the high mountain passes into beautiful empty valleys where there were still patches of snow here and there and blazing our own trail a bit before dropping back down onto the classic TMB route to the Bertoli hut for a coffee and then tackling the last tiring hour back down the steep path to the car in Courmayeur. We were back in town buying Italian Prosecco by 3pm.
Tired, but happy, it's time for a long hot bath and probably another early night. Photos, as usual are on flickr if you fancy seeing what theTMB looks like.
