Day 29: Fueled by Deadmou5, The Foo Fighters and peanuts.

Mood: Tired, very tired, annoyed at having to walk like a 95 year old due to my legs stiffening up
Music: Deadmou5 - For lack of a better name
           The whole Foo Fighters back catalogue, bar the 3rd album which I don't have on my ipod for some reason.

This is going to be fairly short... Today I got up and met with the others and looked at the map for where I was going to be walking today. I did notice that it was only another few hours of walking to go right back to the hotel rather than going back to the place the boat goes from. This would complete me the "W" trek of the area.

I started walking in heavy rain, wearing my sunglasses to keep the rain out of my eyes, hat down to just above them and neckerchief up to the bottom of them. This lasted for the first 30 minutes or so but not long afterwards the sun came out and dried me off somewhat.

After 70 minutes I reached the '2.5hrs away from the start' point and cracked on up the French valley. This involved quite a lot of fairly challenging uphill sections over rocks streams and though woods until I reached the plateau from where the best views can be obtained. I was there 2 hours after setting off, this was marked as a 4 hour walk from my start point. I headed back off the plateau after taking a few photos, mostly to get out of the wind and to find somewhere to have lunch. I stopped down by the river for lunch (20 mins), and this is where Rolf is pictured today.

From there it was a hop and a skip back down the valley (35 mins) and then a 1.5hr walk to the next refuge along the route. From here it was a 2 hour march back to the hotel on already tired legs. I had to tell myself to man up at time in order to keep the pace up going uphill. The last 30 minutes was spent with the hotel in sight in the distance, with me visualising the beer I was to have on arrival (swiftly followed by a litre of fanta). Although I had already drunk almost 3 litres of water during the day, filling my bottle from the fresh mountain streams coming off the glaciers high above, I was very thirsty when I got back.

I'm now showered and changed and back in the lobby, waiting for the guide and the other group I left with this morning, just to let them know I'm alive. I want to try and do so sat down because I'll look silly if I stand up and try to walk towards them!

Bye for now!