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.
