We skipped breakfast and just headed out into the newly wakened town to catch a bus to the car rental place. It was quite an easy way and after some (the regular) small hitches we were already stoving our gear into a fairly large Citroen C3 (yes we are in France) and headed out, finally free of Annemasse.By that time it was already nine o'clock.
I was beginning to notice the lack of morning coffee (which I normally would have several hours earlier before heading to work, so Ben, who was driving (luckily for both of us) did a quick stop at a gas station where we got freshly brewed coffee from a machine. It actually tasted really good!
We had breakfast outside before heading off toward the south again.
Our next stop was at a Decathlon in Chambery. We always find it a true enjoyment to visit Decathlon. There are always so many things there to peak our interests and to inflate our adventurous minds, such as (aside from all kinds of climbing gear) wet suits, kajaks, trail runners stuff, camping gear, biking gear, and so on and so on.
Ben got a new pair of light weight pants and tried on some climbing shoes for later and I got new gloves and also a totally unplanned light down jacket (which I'll be needing for a trip in October).
Aside from that we got more rope and such.
We headed off along the motorway towards Briancon and realized that the shortest way would take us over the French-Italian border and back, which we thought would be an unnecessary toll expense.
We actually decided to take the road straight over the Rhone-Alps instead. At that time we weren't sure the road was passable, but life's an adventure soup right?
We got off the freeway and headed towards Valloire, a ski resort in the Rhone. The fun thing about driving in the mountains are the serpentine roads.
Its not fast going, but no one can say its not scenic. It took us probably more than double the time to cross the mountain, but we enjoyed it all the way.
We stopped at Valloire Telegraph and we also realised there was a via ferrata up there.
The view was stunning, but not as much as the next place we stopped, the highest point in the mountain pass.
The road culminates at an altitude of 2642 m. At that point we got out to get a few pictures. The temperature was 10 dgr Celcius by the car, and THEN it got windy.
Funnily though, most of the other travelers went up there wearing only shorts. I was thinking we were being extremely sensitive, but then I saw they were freezing.
Long pants, sweaters and shell jackets (and my goose down jacket) and we were off to see the sights.
The wind was howling and my fingers were really frozen after just a few minutes in the area.
which in a way was a bit disconcerting since a fraction of a seconds pause and
you'd be toppling down 300 meters of gravel wall (yes it was steep).
We were inside a cloud while we walked around trying to see the view.
Kind of like a moon walk in some places, but then suddenly the cloud cleared and we could see for miles and miles.
As soon as we started down the other side of the pass the skies cleared and the sun started to really warm.
Finally in the afternoon we arrived in Briancon. We had only had the breakfast after leaving Annemasse so we were famined. We got out of the car and were surprised by the temperature. 27 degrees celcius.
We took the opportunity to walk a little and found a local supermarket for some snacks and a simple dinner of fresh veggies, some saucisson, canard and bread.
From Briancon it was a simple matter to get to our final destination, L'Argentière de la Bassee and our hotel La Gare.We were positively surprised by our room, which had a fairly big sleeping area, a bathroom with a tub and another bathroom for the toilet.
We had our dinner and decided to go and try find a sports climbing route. Unfortunately the GPS sent us a bit a stray, but at least we got to drive up and down a fairly lethal gravel road in crazy angles and hair pin serpentine turns. We found a little mountain river and dipped our fingers into the freezing glazier water. At that point the sun was setting behind the mountain range and we jogged back to the car so as to try survive the crazy driving before nightfall.
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