We slept a little late at our hotel, had a delicious breakfast with amazing fresh fruit, really good coffee, and the Spanish toast with tomato sauce (sounds meh, but it’s amazing). We took a shower, and got hiking between 10 and 10:30. We hiked a lot the day before and we knew the next day should only be about six and a half hours, so we knew we could take the morning slow.
The first part was a road walk to a ski area with a Surprising number of people going to it. The lift was open and people were taking it up to get a view and walk around. It was very tempting to take the lift, but instead we got two sandwiches to go and hiked up. As expected there were a lot of people, but the views were really amazing.
From the pass we made out way down to the next farming valley, then headed back up the other side, past a couple mountain lakes that were tempting to camp at, but would have left us with a really long day tomorrow. Crossed a Boulder field and up over the next pass.
As we descended from the pass we found a nice camping spot near Refuge de Pombe, we debated staying or continuing on to camp near the hut. The wind might be worse up high, and there will probably be rain overnight, but the temptation to camp in solitude won out and we stayed at the high lake.
Dinner was an experiment; Chinese tofu with broccoli, peppers, carrot, ginger, noodles and mushrooms in a Szechuan black bean sauce, very tasty, we ate as we watched the sunset light on the eastern mountain range, the view to the west wasn’t visible without climbing back up to the top of the pass, which we were a little late for (unless we were willing to delay dinner), but we got a great view from camp anyway.
