TMB Day 9

Refugios. They have been great and highly recommend them if you should do this trek. You often hike with many of the same people and is nice to see familiar faces and friends each day. The sleeping can be tough since it is dorm style packing you in like sardines. Just a line of beds, often 20 to a room.

Bathrooms and showers are gender neutral and weirdly created no issues, no heartache, certainly no assaults… it’s almost as if this is a completely made up issue 😂

Yesterday we completed the loop back to Les Houches, but it didn’t exactly go according to plan. The day was insanely long and difficult, most difficult yet, 17.6 miles, 5,600 foot ascent, 6,900 feet descended over the course of 13 hours! This brings our total ascent to 32,500 feet, which means we climbed the equivalent of Mt Everest, plus 3,500 feet. Holy crapola, and right now I am feeling it.

Downpour. The day started with a hard rain which lasted the first four plus hours of the hike and the high was only in the 50’s. So, cold and wet. After an hour and a half of hiking, we reached the ladders. I have a fear of heights. I have no earthly idea why I was thinking I would be able to climb the ladders.

Some of the ladders were completely vertical, just climbing straight up the cliff, others were at an angle. I sat there staring at them as if I continued to do so that I could change what I was seeing or would have to do. I couldn’t do it.

I made the heart-wrenching decision to head back down. Movies will not be made about this moment, novels will not be written and songs will not be sung. Fail. Total fail. I told my wife that she should continue with the group and I’ll make my way to Chamonix, but she stayed with me. Amazing.

Our friends continued on the wet ladders and Stacy and I headed back down, dejected. I felt so badly not only for me but more so for my wife who would now be missing this opportunity.

We decided to try and take what is called the lower route, which if it is raining I highly recommend. Given the weather we were essentially walking in a cloud the whole time and people at the top didn’t get a view either. We were thinking we might be able to make it to a gondola and meet back up with them, even though what we were doing would add 2-3 miles to our tremendously long day. Yes that means Stacy and I did 20 miles. My heart app registered 51,000 steps and promptly keeled over and died. 😂

We made our way to Refugio de La Flagere. Once off airplane mode, I got a ding from the group saying they were at the Refugio at the top of the gondola. I sent a screenshot of our location, thank god, and said I don’t think we are going to be able to meet up because we are only at Refugio de La Flagere, and they said: us too!!!

The Colorado 6 unite!! I could’ve jumped for joy. We didn’t even realize that the route had them drop back down after the ladders. Miracle. We depressingly realized that we had only gone four miles over the course of the first three and a half hours. We seriously had to pick it up and are only now facing the toughest of the uphill sections.

The sun started to peak its head out but only for glimpses. Occasionally an opening in the clouds would form a circle around the mountains, almost like a cartoon cut out. I felt like Jack’s Beanstalk could have taken us up to its secret fortress. The trail started pushing up, relentlessly. Trail runners passed us with ease, bastards 😂.

We ever so briefly thought we had finally reached the summit only to realize that we still had almost a mile to go. We entered and crossed a boulder field with yellow dots guiding our way.

Redemption!! Just prior to reaching the summit, still in the boulder field, we came across a final section of ladders!! Nooooooo!! Ryan and Nikki waited for us to give the bad news.

Once I saw the ladders, my heart sank. They stared back, like a foe who finally had its enemy cornered. All the work, all the effort, just to avoid these fucking ladders, straight from the pits of hell, had been resurrected before my eyes. The turn around for Chamonix was miles back, while the summit literally lay before our eyes.

Rebecca, who is also quite uncomfortable with heights, started to get emotional and not in a good way. There were two sets of ladders that were connected, yet not. Once you finished one, you would have to be on its top step, before shimming over to start the next.

We simply had to go forward. I started making my way, sidewalling/scrambling over to the ladders. Even the scramble to get there felt harrowing being on a precipice. I listened to Nick and Ryan’s advice and leaned forward into the rock wall. I told Rebecca not to start yet because I needed to go back. I took a few deep breaths, said never mind and pressed on.

The scramble over was far scarier than I had anticipated, but I had reached the ladders. The ladders were not vertical, but more like a 75° angle. I took a deep breath and began climbing.

A few steps into the first ladder I ever so briefly froze. I wanted to come down but was now stuck in this weird limbo where it would’ve been equally scary, if not scarier, to descend. I white knuckled/puckered it and continued. When I am in these terrible situations my tendency is to move quickly so it is over quickly.

I tried not to think and just move. In my mind, the transition from one ladder to the next was terrifying and time defying, I felt like a gecko plastered to rock wall. Stacy later told me that she thought I moved far too quickly, so I know this is not reality, but because of my stupid fear of heights, time slowed down making each moment feel like a lifetime.

At the top. I made it. Despite the arduousness of the day, I felt energized. Ryan said he was proud of me and gave double fist bumps, Nikki gave me a hug and my beautiful wife was right behind me with tears in her eyes. They were not tears of joy, but empathy, knowing how difficult it must have been for me, which is what brought her to tears. She may have even felt my pain/fear more than I. The fact that it brought my wife to tears on my behalf is what makes love the most powerful force in this world.

Rebecca pulled through in equally strong fashion. She had only mentally prepared herself for one series of ladders (did I mention that there are about 10 ladders!! for the first series of ladders) and seeing this second unanticipated series was a little too much at that time. We both got through it.

At the summit. There is a gondola for those wanting to avoid the downhill. We chose to walk the whole thing and finish it. No shade to those who took the gondola because I’m here to tell you that the hike down was brutal. Super steep and slow going since there were rocks that had to be slid down and chains along the cliff face to hold on to, it was not a leisurely downhill.

Though we started at 7:30am, it was now well after 8pm before we started rolling into town. I started playing Europe’s The Final Countdown as we approached Les Houches. We felt broken, weary, battered, gleeful, alive and overjoyed both to have done it and to be done. We did it. The trip of a lifetime. World renowned trek. The Colorado 6 finishing together, celebratory beers await and stories for a lifetime.Читать далее