What a magnificent stage through the Alps. This stage goes into the high mountains up to almost 2000 meters. There is a lot of climbing and often quite steep, but that is more than made up for by views of the Alps, the Jura and Lake Geneva.
At a quarter to 8 we have already packed our things, had breakfast and are ready to leave.
Today we start the first 60 kilometer stretch through the mountains to Samoëns, where only halfway we'll cross a valley where there are roads, habitation and a supermarket. Our plan is to walk this in 3 stages, with 2 nights of wild camping. It will be intense, as the elevation gain is of a different caliber than we have had so far. The route begins with a small descent past farmlands and farms; it'll be the last inhabited area we pass today. It's still chilly when we start hiking, but the sun soon shows itself. In one of the meadows below us we see a fox walking through the field. He stops halfway, looks at us and then walks on quickly. How wonderful to walk in the morning...
Once we start climbing, we continue to do so for the rest of the day. We walk up through the forest and don't really notice to have climbed so much already. Not until we walk out of the forest into an alpine meadow, look around and suddenly can enjoy the wide view. A long way below us is Lake Geneva, while on the other side we can see the gigantic mountains of the Alps, with the white peaks of Mont Blanc in the distance.
Next to a barn, water comes from a hose over a drinking trough, where we can fill our bottles for the first break. We walk for another half hour and pause at the most beautiful spot. Behind us is a viewpoint, quite a bit higher than where we are sitting. A sign indicates that it's still a 20-minute walk to the top and it' so tempting to "just climb" up there. Normally we definitely would, but we restrain ourselves to save energy for the rest of the hike; after all, we still have more than half of the altimeters to go... A little later we are glad we didn't do it, because after the break the trail descends a little and then climbs to altitudes we haven't yet been to this trip: almost 2,000 meters above sea level. With each little hill we cross and each little curve we round, the views become more stunning. Wow, how beautiful this is!!!
On top of a ridge we pass a shepherd who is herding a herd of goats across the mountain pastures with his border collies and guard dog. It is a beautiful sight. The collies are fierce and take their herding task quite seriously, but the guard dog is (thankfully) sprawled out in the shade, flat on the ground. He only raises an eyebrow as we walk by...
A little further on it gets a little busier. A little below Pointe de Pelluaz at 1,908 meters, there's a parking lot with restaurants and an auberge at a ski resort and quite a few tourists come to visit. The route is marked on the ridge straight ahead. We see a couple of narrow "goat trails" on a steep slope, but they don't really seem suitable to walk with our backpacks. So we decide to deviate from the trail a little bit and walk up the steep path over the slope, hoping to pick up the trail there soon. After 20 minutes of climbing, we reach the top and are again treated to stunning views, but unfortunately not to a path that takes us back to the GR5. Oops... A bit below us we do see a wider path that runs in the right direction, and completely against our principles we decide to stroll off road, along the fence of a stretch where there are sheep. Normally we prefer to stay on trails and roads. Not only because it's easier to walk, but also to avoid unnecessary damage to nature. But necessity knows no law and carefully we shuffle down all the extra altimeters from before. Another 20 minutes later we reach the path at the bottom of the slope and a little further on we fortunately get back on the GR5.
Not much further, in a beautiful valley with a small lake, Mark spots a snake crawling across the path at about 2 meters distance. We just manage to take a picture of it to look up the species before it crawls away into the grass. Always nice to see such an animal! And as soon as we take 3 steps further and are still talking about the one snake, we almost step on a second snake that comes out of the grass and quickly makes its way out. Wow, 2 snakes in such a short distance, that sure makes an impression! Fortunately they are non-venomous ring snakes, but in the rest of the valley we pay extra close attention to the trail. We walk over the hill to the next valley. This turns out to be another picture perfect: 2 little lakes on the edge of rocky slopes. We take a break here and try to estimate how far we will get today. We don't know yet where we'll sleep tonight. But since we have only walked about 13 kilometers, we still have some kilometers to go. It's 3.30pm, but we still have enough energy so we continue our hike.
We notice that in the high mountains the kilometers go a lot slower than in the rest of the GR5. The altitude meters, but also the amazing views that we often stop at, make the it all go by more slowly. Even the breaks to refuel are a bit longer than before. It takes some getting used to, but it seems to work well this way and we'll have to adjust the stages accordingly. At the top, we reach today's (and the entire hike's) highest point at Les Portes d'Oche at 1,937 meters. The trail then stays at the same altitude between a high cliff and a valley, when right in front of us a small, young alpine ibex passes by, followed by mom ibex. Quietly grazing and scrambling over the rocks, they aren't afraid of us at all. We walk on past them and after the next col comes the point where we have to decide: walk on to a refuge 5 kilometers away or descend a bit to a place where we can get water and pitch our tent here nearby on a flat piece of mountain. We decide to do the latter and walk a bit downhill where fortunately the cold water does indeed flow abundantly. It turns out to be a collection of about a dozen old barns and houses where nobody lives these days. Only a few donkeys are grazing near a stall. Here we fill all the empty bottles we have with us and climb the meters back up to a nice flat spot we saw earlier.
A little after 7 pm we sit down. It was only 17 kilometers today, but we climbed a lot and it's already late by now. Time to bivouac at this beautiful spot with views of the mountains around us and a last dash of Lake Geneva in the valley. What a wonderful, impressive hike we made today....
