When the mountain calls: running the Tour du Mont Blanc Part 4
- Andy Hood
- Oct 23, 2023
- 5 min read
Today would take me to a new country, my third of the run, Italy. Destination Coumayeur. Italy would prove to be a very different experience to that of Switzerland.
The first few miles out of La Fouly were on a quiet road, gently climbing. I’d left early to get ahead of the warm day, it was forecast to be in the 30’s again. My strategy was to break the back of the miles by lunchtime, leaving a slightly easier afternoon and early finish. There were some big climbs today including Grand Col Ferret at around 8400 feet.
Once off the road I was back to trail, my mapping taking a direct route up the first steep climb, there was a switchback mountain road to the top, I stopped and debated with a hiker as to the best way to go, she went for the switchbacks I opted for the direct route the mapping app showed me. At the start of the climb there was a circular sign with red surround and what looked like an image of a well-dressed Victorian gentleman. Pondering this for a moment I decided it meant if I was dressed in my best Versace clothes this probably wasn’t the way for me, I was however a trail runner, dressed as a trail runner and pushed on.
Overgrown is an understatement, I felt like an early explorer making my way through deep jungle, surely there would be bear, tiger and large spiders any moment. My legs took a beating from nettles and bramble. On cresting the climb and being thrown into open space I surveyed the legs decided this put in the league of Adventurer and I was proud of the nettle rash and blood stained bramble cuts.
The Mont-Blanc massif was now on my right, the day before I had turned the corner, it took a while to get used to seeing the range on the opposite side. As I continued the climb the mountains took on a lush green hue, off to my left a deep valley falling several thousand feet, beyond the mountains climb again to impressive and imposing heights. A thousand or more feet below I could hear the cow bells, the sound never fails to make me smile. As I stood in one of the most peaceful locations of the entire Tour, not a single person in sight, I was thrown to my feet with hands over my head as two incredibly low fighter jets screamed down the valley and up over the opposite mountain range. The noise tears the air apart around you, I always find the sound both powerful and unsettling. They were out of sight as quickly as they arrived and once again, I was in total peace.
And that experience got me thinking. I’d been surrounded for the last couple of days by an incredible landscape, so far removed from the daily hustle and bustle of life. Even the small villages I went through were free from the usual over commercialisation we see every day. Drop me in any town or city in the UK and I am guaranteed to see a very familiar landscape, Starbucks, Costa, McDonalds, Tesco to name just a few. We live in a homogenised world, pre-packed and if for a moment we were to take a drone eye view we’d likely see us shuffling around, zombie state, in and out of these bland brick buildings exiting all holding the same container and staring at a 6-inch screen in hand to see who had liked the post of our morning latte. Suddenly that world seemed further away that it ever had. And I was glad.
Where I was, what I was experiencing felt like home. I didn’t want to return to the sheep pen world. I turned, smiled, and continued my run to the top of Grand Col Ferret.
Grand Col Ferret tops out at around 8400ft (2537 meters). The view being worth every hard step it had taken to get here. As with several of the highest points there were usually a collection of hikers all admiring and celebrating. Upon arrival you were met with a smile from fellow travellers who respected the climb you’d just made. The Aosta Valley lay between two very imposing mountain ranges, it ran between them like a wide green river. Courmayeur, my destination for the day, was in the valley. I asked a couple to take my picture as is one of the current header images on my website. Timestamp on the photo says it was 9:54am, I’d achieved a lot that morning already.
The descent I recall was rocky and technical, demanding concentration, I was focussed on each foot placing and was running at a decent speed, the sky was deep blue, the air so warm and my mood high that part way I took a wrong turn which added about an hour to my day. There were two GPS tracks for today, the first taking you to a rest stop for those who were splitting this run up into an extra day, I’d chosen to run further and had missed that I needed to pick up the new track part way down the hill. The climb back to the top was steep, rough, technical and the day was heating fast. When I reached Courmayeur in the mid-afternoon a pharmacy sign proudly displayed the temperature as 33C.
The afternoon run into town was mainly along a balcony trail, beautiful fora, green all around and interspersed with cooling woods. The final section down into town was steep but my trusty Hoka Speedgoats gave plenty of traction and confidence.
Courmayeur turned out to be a disappointment. As did my whole experience of the town, I looked forward to getting back out on the trail the following day. It was a town full of those expensive shops the ski-elite crave, perfect if I wanted to hike a mile from the car in a £350 jacket you didn’t want to get dirty or snag on a bramble. And they appeared to be so embarrassed to have a Carrefour supermarket that there is zero signage outside and it appears to be so well hidden that even with Google Maps I spent nearly half an hour trying to find it only to realise I had walked past its door a dozen or more times.
My evening dinners to this point had been excellent, hearty, tasty and with a service that lifted my heart. Courmayeur was the opposite. Service was rude at best, and portions meagre. I was presented with a bright white chicken breast on a plate and a very small bowl of chips. That was it. Presentation nil – Service nil and Taste nil. At the end of the meal the waiter asked if I wanted a coffee, I gave up drinking coffee at the start of the year, so I politely declined, the look on his face was priceless, perhaps he thought I’d likened his mother to a wild boar. I returned to my 1950’s décor room and slept well.
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