It was cold overnight, there was frost on the ground when we woke up, but we were comfortable. I woke up first and went out to check out sunrise. I walked around the lake to get a better view, but the clouds were gray, so I started back, but on my way back in realized the clouds on the next valley were pink and red, so I ran back across the lake and over the hill back toward the last lake to catch it, and it was totally worth it!
When I got back we ate breakfast and packed up.
We had three options for the day:
1) keep hiking up to Lac Glaciè and over the other side, which goes down and up again to the highest refuge in the range
2) backtrack a bit and take a high mountain pass over a snowfield to that same high refuge.
3 backtrack and skip that hut and instead go past where we planned on camping and explore a new area.
They were all interesting options, but we ended up going with 1, Lac glaciè.
Up the trail went through some amazing high mountain landscape. I kind of hoped Lac Glaciè would have a glacier, it looked like it might have had one recently, but not now. It’s high enough and the bowl faces north. I often wonder how many of these mountains had glaciers up until recently and how they might have looked even earlier in my lifetime.
The pass after the lake gave us a spectacular view of the next valley, the high hut, and the glacier next to it.
Down the Trail went, from approx 2700 meters go 2250, then back up to close to 2700 again. We stopped at the hut for a drink and a snack and enjoyed the view.
From there we headed to the next hut, where we have the option of camping, or we can head up and over the next mountain and see what’s there.
Unfortunately by the time we got there, we don’t really have much of a choice, the next spot where we might be able to camp is to far and we wouldn’t get there until late.
so we took a side trip to the base of the glacier there before setting up camp.
Sadly there were a bunch of other campers at that site, but is not surprising as it’s a popular site and on both the GR10 and the HRP.
For dinner I gave the tomato alfredo another try, this time I soaked the veggies longer and that worked well, but the cheese was still a bit clumpy… oh well it tasted good.