Day 13, Monday August 22
Landry to Refuge d’Entre le Lac
A sunny day almost all uphill to 2300m and an isolated refuge tonight at 2155m.
Inge has been having trouble with heat, altitude and climbing. She took the bus part way up today. I walked, but in hindsight I wish I had taken the bus. The walk up to the point where I met Inge was not scenic and was quite steep. In fact, we should have skipped Landry entirely and taken the bus yesterday afternoon to the very new and big refuge where we met today. Our guide book is purist and would never call a section boring and best skipped. There were a couple of French hikers on the bus with Inge I guess they know better.
After a good lunch we had a scenic walk up a valley with glacier-fed waterfalls to rocky alpine. The refuge (bottom left in the photo above) is small, rustic and located beside a mountain lake. Lots of marmots and we saw a few chamois, another type of mountain goat, smaller than boquetin. The refuge has two cows grazing freely which one of the gardiens milked in the late afternoon.
The weather is changing. After sun all day, clouds and a cool wind have arrived and there is thunder. One of the French hikers asked one of the gardiens if it will rain. He laughed and said “perhaps, but the weather is very localized.” We’ll see.
Roy
PS – no rain