Mont Buet (10.07.2009)
| Start point | Le Buet |
|---|---|
| Endpoint | Le Buet |
| Characteristic | Hike |
| Map |
|
| Ascents | Mont Buet (3,096m) | 10.07.2009 |
|---|
Thursday, 9th July 2009
It was a beautiful morning to wake up to. Blue skies, minimal cloud on the mountain tops and fresh air. Hanna and I had the room with the view too, which meant we could step out onto the balcony and look straight up to the Aiguille du Midi – what more could you ask for? We met up with Dan and Tobbe at 8.30am for breakfast, so there was plenty of time for us both to shower before that. Unfortunately the 7.50 Euros breakfast proved a little disappointing. Apart from the fresh bread, croissants and coffee, there wasn’t much else on offer to satisfy our hungry hiker’s stomachs! Nevertheless, after we’d finished up in the dining room, we left a bit of kit behind in the hotel and set off for the train station, via the supermarket, to stock up on some food for lunch before we started our ascent of Mont Buet.
Despite having arrived at the train station in good time for the 11.16am departure, we were still struggling to get seats on the Mont Blanc Express, but fortunately quite a few of them were getting off at the first or second stop so they weren’t too bothered about sitting. After passing through Argentiere and Montroc, we arrived in Le Buet just before midday. Our trail started just across the road from the train station, and weaved a nice little route through the woods and up the valley toward the Pierre a Berard hut. It was a pretty comfortable temperature for hiking too although Hanna and Tobbe decided to go paddling in the mountain stream to cool off their feet anyway. We took the pace steadily up the valley, not really encountering a huge amount of people which I was quite surprised by. I’d expected the paths to be crammed with tourists which fortunately they were not. Anyway, we met a few chamois along the way, which readily posed for us to take photos and that kind of made things a bit more exciting. We didn’t really stop for lunch until getting to the hut, where we could sit on the benches outside and soak up a few more sun rays. Tobbe did ask the hut warden if we could settle down into the dormitories at that time but the rooms weren’t ready until 4pm, so we concluded that we could walk a bit further up the path to gain some more height instead of just sitting around with nothing to do.
Hanna, Tobbe and Dan spent some time taking a short sleep after we got back, before we had dinner but I decided to drink some decaf coffee and read a local leaflet downstairs instead. A bit of a boring way to pass the time but it worked. Dinner at 6.30pm proved to be OK. The four of us had to shift elsewhere after we’d finished dessert, because there was another group who were waiting for their dinner too. I couldn’t quite work out how the hut didn’t have the same number of bed and table spaces......
Friday, 10th July 2009
I got up at 6am to have some coffee and hot chocolate before the others decided to get up for breakfast at 7am. Today’s breakfast was not at all what we’d considered to be a mountaineer’s breakfast: stale bread with jam and/or butter, and a hot drink. Typical for a french hut I think. Now we wished we had that hotel breakfast instead – luxury in comparison with this! Needless to say, we didn’t spend too long dwelling over breakfast, and after some faffing, we’d left the hut at about 8.30am. The temperature was nice and cool, but we soon got hot from the effort of walking uphill. We made good progress though and reached the col in about 1.5 hours. The views started to get really good from here, and as we hit the snow covered terrain, the clouds started to clear a bit and we were treated to some great views across the Chamonix valley, all the way across to the Mont Blanc massif. Sadly the clouds hadn’t quite left the summit and it remained shrouded in mist/cloud for the rest of the day we were hiking. Anyway, after the initial excitement of the sun coming out, I got a bit overheated and found the last ½ hour or so a real slog to get to the summit. The only consolation was possible the elegant summit ridge which eventually broadened out as we got closer to the summit itself. The weather was perfect though – not a breath of wind, and apart from a bit of mist drifting here and there, it was dry, sunny and almost clear. We had an early lunch at the top and took lots of photos!
Dan seemed eager to rush off ahead of the rest of us on the descent, but I stayed back with Hanna and Tobbe who provided good company as usual and we took some time to gaze again at Mont Blanc for some pre-ascent inspiration for the latter part of our trip to come. We passed more chamois and even saw a marmot. There seemed to be a crazy amount of wildlife pottering about on this mountain! It was fascinating to see them though even if the marmot wasn’t as friendly as the chamois. Anyway, we got to the hut at about 1.15pm, sat around on the benches (which incidentally were now also mainly occupied by school kids) to eat some more lunch and then set off again to try and get the 4.04pm train from Le Buet, back to Chamonix. And even though it was swelteringly hot at times, we finally made it with a few minutes to spare. Fortunately this time the train was pretty empty and we had no problem forging our way through crowds to get to seats. Tobbe or Hanna did point out quite rightly, though that there would probably be a huge number piling on later when we were nearer to Chamonix.
After arriving back in Chamonix we wandered into town and patiently queued for about 10 minutes to buy some delicious celebratory ice creams, and sat down by the river to eat them. It was a lovely evening, marred only by the sad loss of my glass mug which I’d accidentally knocked over in the hut in the morning. I almost forgot about that. We wanted to eat at the hotel but apparently the chef had a broken thumb from skiing so they weren’t offering the usual food menu, but a BBQ made do instead and we got something to eat eventually. At 10 Euros I didn’t exactly consider it good value for money but it was probably cheaper than eating out at a restaurant in town.
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