TMB Day 4: La Fouly to Courmayeur - June 2023
After going to bed with a full stomach and plenty of time to relax, we awoke on Day 4 well rested and anxious to power through our last 18+ mile day of the trip. We skipped breakfast and jumped on trail to get an early start by 6AM, knowing the day would be long and challenging, but offer spectacular views.
Logistics
We hiked following the AllTrails TMB Loop from mile marker 58.9 to mile marker 40.3 on this day. We accumulated 5,300 feet of vertical gain over 19.6 miles. Our moving time for the day was just about 8 hours.
Hiking
With an early morning start and long days given our relative proximity to the Summer solstice, getting started before 6AM was no challenge at all. The cloudy morning actually brought its own character to the day as a mystic feel emanated around us. I decided to add a little extra scrambling to the morning by accidentally navigating through a rhubarb patch instead of sticking to the main trail. A scramble I won’t forget! Nevertheless, like the day prior, we were welcomed by solitude for the first few hours of this hike. We didn’t run into another hiker until our first landmark for this day, the Auberge de la Peele. Interestingly, we were first greeted by various cows in the morning!
Just outside of Auberge de la Peale, a cow greeted us at the start of our last very long day on the TMB.
From our first landmark, the morning’s ascent gradually continued. We were destined for the Grand Col Ferret, signifying the border between Italy and Switzerland, as well as, the end of our major block of incline for the day. As we ascended closer to the col, the cloudy/mystic morning transformed into pure fog and cloud cover. Many people mention this col as one of the most beautiful of the TMB, however as nature would have it on our journey, there wouldn’t be much to see.
Signage at the top of the Grand Col Ferret.
Although we didn’t get to stop and take in the views from the Col, we were fortunate to start our initial descent on terrain that was very hike able compared to days in the past (and an end of day challenge that would surprise us later!). This allowed us to cruise down into the valley and start to break through the clouds and fog and get our first glimpse of the Italian side of the TMB. The views were breathtaking, even though the mountain range was playing peek-a-boo behind clouds. What we could see was incredible! After taking a minute to appreciate the views, we pressed on with Bar Chalet Val Ferret as our target. This refuge rested at the end of the TMB’s stretch in the valley and would be a great morning coffee spot considering it separated us from our last major climb of the day. We enjoyed some of the best cappuccino we had ever drank, while taking in the lively atmosphere in the valley.
Incredible coffee on the Italian side. Cappuccino was much needed after a challenging start to the day.
It was honestly hard to leave this spot. I probably could have stayed here and drank two more cups of coffee and stared out into the valley and Massif. After about a 20 minute break, we decided it was time to keep moving and get through our last ascent of the day. This climb proved pretty controllable as well. Maybe we were building “trail legs” a bit, at least going up, but we seemed to have reached Rifugio Walter Bonatti without really thinking about it. This represented another coffee and snack break for us. We decided, given our early morning start, that we really wanted to capitalize on the refuge stops moving forward. I am glad we picked this day to make the decision! After taking in the views of the Massif (the clouds had started to lift), we pressed forward and knocked out about 7 relatively flat miles pretty quickly. The only major events during this time were staring at the Massif now that it was visible and navigating two cows that had gotten on trail. That was quite the experience working out a way to “pass” them.
We knew the big drop was coming, because we had done some recon the night prior, but by the time we approached the mile marker were it was evident we would be descending approximately 3,000 feet in a little over 3 miles, it really started to sink in. At this point we had already hiked 15 miles over 6+ hours and had our third day in a row of 4,500 feet of gain. Needless to say, we were not really looking forward to the challenge to come, and to make matters worse, the descent was more technical than we would have preferred. By the bottom, my quads were spasming anytime I took a break.
Finally, we broke out of the forest and onto a service road first, but ultimately into the outskirts of Courmayeur. We had some added road walking that nobody was excited about at this point, but thankfully it wasn’t as steep as the previous section. After about 3/4 a mile of town walking, we arrived at our “home” for the night, Le Vieux Pommier.
An early sign that the pain of descent would be ending and our hardest day of the trip was almost over!
Accommodations
We knew going into the week that Le Vieux Pommier would be a hotel and we would have dedicated rooms here. This could not have come at a better time given where we were at physically at this point. We had already hiked 65 miles in 4 days and were in need of some extra care that evening. Fortunately our friend was waiting for us in the hotel and helped make the day move a little easier. He grabbed us some coffee and showed us around. We decided we really needed to take advantage of our time in Italy and chose to forgo the hotel restaurant in pursuit of traditional Italian cuisine: Pizza, Pizza, Pizza! We had the best pizza ever at L’angelo di Mel, where an elderly Italian cooked us up fresh pizza. To finish up the meal, we walked down the street to eat some gelato, in true Italian fashion! Finally, we took in the chance to relax in a bigger town on the trail and sat in a pavilion people watching.
As my favorite food is Pizza, this was an absolute treat!
Photos
All photos were taken with my phone at the time, the iPhone 12 Pro.
