Trient to Col des Montets and to Tre le Champ

Day 13 - Trient (1290 meters or 4234 feet) to Col des Montets (1465 meters or 4800 feet) and to Tre le Champ, France : 14.8 km

Trient is picturesque little village with the church as the center point. The area receives plenty of rain – you see moss growing on all roofs.

Starting out we left Trient and walked straight to the end of the neighbor village Le Peuty where the trail and climb started.

We had a long climb and at the top of the pass we reached to Col de Balme (2195 meters or 7200 feet), which is the border between Switzerland and France. 

At the col there is a refuge, Refuge du Col de Balme, where you can get a bite to eat or drink. One nasty old lady was running it, the coffee was lousy and the sandwich hardly had any cheese in it. Later we read that “The Guardian” at the Col de Balme refuge has a reputation of being very grumpy. Nevertheless the views were incredible. 

Farther down the mountain at Col des Posettes there was a restaurant, Alpage de Balme that had great coffee and blueberry pie! There were mountain bikes all over the place. Quite a task to ride a bike up the mountain!

At one place we came upon a guy sitting in a blueberry patch eating as fast as he could pick the berries.

When we reached Col de Montets we learned the bus no longer came that far out of Chamonix. After asking people that wanted to help but had no idea we walked to Tre le Champs and then to Montroc and soon the Chamonix bus came along.