In my last post I touched on the guides. Today I'd like to talk about my fellow hikers. When I booked this trip, I really had no idea what kind of people would be on it. On the one hand, I figured it would be something like my trip to the Galapagos: mostly older upper middle class types who could take two weeks off and had the money to pay for it. ( Read more... )

Before I continue the travelogue from Italy, I thought I'd take a moment to talk about the guides. We had two guides and one driver on the tour. All three were experienced certified guides who'd been hired as contractors by REI. They arranged all the hotels, rides, lunches and everything else that happened between being picked up and dropped off at ( Read more... )

We only spent two nights in Italy. All of our time in Italy was spent hiking along the Val Ferret, a long skinny valley running between the pass from France we had crossed the day before and the pass to Switzerland we would cross the day after.

After a solid breakfast, we walked through the streets of Courmayeur. After passing the guild hall for ( Read more... )

The morning after the longest, wettest, coldest day of the Tour looked pretty much as cold and wet as it had been the day before. We had breakfast and took a van up to the start of the trail. First though, we had to visit a cheese creamery. Well, ok then, twist my arm!

The cheese in question is Beaufort, which is a cow's milk cheese vaguely like ( Read more... )

The first day of the Tour du Mt Blanc was gloomy with sprinkles of rain throughout. The second day was, from a hiking perspective, a full on weather catastrophe. Naturally, this was the longest single day of hiking of the entire trip. I'll demonstrate by linking some pictures. Photos nineteen through twenty-one in this set are from August 15. Yes ( Read more... )

With Thursday's tune up hike in the books, it was time for the main event. On Friday, August 14 my group started the Tour du Mt Blanc. We rose to a gray, gloomy day and took a short van ride to Les Houches. From there we took the ski gondolas to the top of the mountain and started walking ( Read more... )

On my first full day in France with the REI group, we had a tune up hike that set the pattern for all the days to follow ( Read more... )

Now that we'd arrived in Chamonix, we were on the verge of hiking more than 100 miles through three countries over nine days. In a situation like that, you need good boots that have been well broken in. Fortunately, I had plenty of advance notice and a major tuneup hike in the the Southwest four months prior to the Tour du Mt Blanc, so in February ( Read more... )

After a brief few hours in France the day before, on August 12 my trip really got started. First though, I got to have fun experiences with currency exchanges ( Read more... )

After one hot day of walking around Geneva, I decided it would be a good idea to follow the lead of all the swimmers and boaters I saw by getting on the lake the next day. Fortunately, CGN has a number of boat tours that go from Geneva to many points throughout the 72 kilometers of the lake, and it was very easy to book a ticket for the SS Simplon, ( Read more... )