Haute Route Hiking in the Alps: Hiking over Fenetre d'Arpette

After our first two days of moderate hiking, it was time for a big one - the Fenetre d'Arpette, which involved a lot of miles, a lot of hours, a lot of altitude, and long, steep stretches with no real "trail" at all.

The first hour of the hike is flat along the Triente River, which is meltwater from the Triente Glacier.  You could see the glacier up at the head of the valley from the very start. 

I enjoyed the sound of the water over the rocks and around the boulders.  It was early enough in the morning that the sun hadn't reached the valley floor.

These rivers come from melting ice from the glacier. Notice the large area of dry rock. That's where the glacier used to be. The glacier has been melting in summer much faster than it's been replenished by new snow in winter for the last thirty years or so. Thousands of towns and cities around the world rely on meltwater rivers like these for water. What will they do once the glaciers have melted away? 

Years ago, a landslide destroyed the trail, so they put in a rope to hang onto while crossing this slanted muddy area. You can't see it in this photo, but this hillside just drops straight down hundreds of feet. Fun! 

After another hour of steep hiking, we were getting higher up and closer to the rivers and the glacier. You could hear the sound of the roaring waterfalls the whole time. 

Here's a short video of a closeup of the larger waterfalls of meltwater.  Crazy how much water is coming off of this glacier every second. Sadly, youtube has murdered the quality of this video, but this at least give you an idea of how powerful this one is, and it's only one of several draining off all day and night. 

For the last hour or so, the trail was steep enough that you could use your hands sometimes, and turned into nothing but rocks in places. If you're looking at this on a computer screen, you'll be able to see seven other hikers coming down the trail from above. The Fenetre d'Arpette, the top of the pass and high point of the hike, is over the ridge in that dip at the upper right corner. 

 

Here's the receding "tongue" of the glacier up close. 

We're high up enough to see the glacier and its meltwater streams from the side now.

Nearly there.

A  couple of closer views. 

I really wanted to go hike closer to all that ice. 

Finally, made it to the "window." It never ceases to amaze what a huge new view you get by taking those last few steps to the top.  A whole new series of valleys and ridges we hadn't seen until now. 

All the way up and down the trail, there were trail runners. Of course, they're not running like on a flat surface, but they're hopping and dodging up and down the trail as fast as they can.  Some people do the same trail over and over and time themselves, trying to get their best time. Of course, there are even races across the mountains every once in a while, with extreme athletes completing a series of connected trails like this one in the time it took us to do just one.  

The way down is right here in front of us, but it's so steep going down that we couldn't see it. When people started hiking down, they disappeared from view after only a few steps. 

The first hour or so on the trail down was steep, dry dirt mixed with sliding and rolling rocks. 

If you squint, you can see four groups of hikers scattered along the trail leading down. 

Our guide Mike working his way down. 

A brief rest on the way down.  You can see some other hikers picking their way across the boulders in the background. 

After an hour picking our way between boulders, it seemed like we must be getting near the bottom. In fact, we were only a third of the way down.     

OK, that's the last of the photos for this hike. 

Click this for a link to our first two hikes. 

Click here to see the hike after that, from the Mont Fort mountain hut to the Prafleury mountain hut.

Click here to see our hike past Lac de Dix, over the Pas de Chevres, and into Arolla.

Haute Route Hiking in the Alps: From Chamonix

Over ten days in early August 2022, we hiked about 95 miles through the Alps, climbing up and over at least one mountain pass every day. The trip was planned by Wilderness Travel, with fourteen hikers, eight of whom were a group of friends linked by our distant past at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Wilderness Travel rated the trip a 5+, and there were days we climbed over 5000 vertical feet, or were out on the trail for nine and a half hours, but it was all worth it for the camaraderie and the views. 

Our first day was a checkout hike from Chamonix up the opposite side of the valley from Mont Blanc, which meant we could return to the our hotel in Chamonix after the hike. The views up and down the valley toward Mont Blanc and surrounding mountains were great. It was warmer than usual, but clear and sunny. 

After less than an hour, we were up out of the trees. We were spread out on the trail, with some sprinting ahead, and others taking their time enjoying the views. 

A short while later, we found out there were steel ladders on this hike. Climbing a ladder focuses the mind a bit.  Don't want to mess up the rest of the trip with a fall on the first day! Only one person in this photo is from our group. The rest are other hikers. This was the busiest hike of the trip, as you could do it as a day trip from Chamonix.  

There were multiple sets of ladders along this stretch of the hike. Notice the woman standing at the very top of the photo, in amongst the trees. 

The rocky valley behind Jennifer is the Mer de Glace, i.e., "the sea of ice." After years of melting, it's more like the sea of boulders. The glacier used to reach down to the valley.  The grinding action of billions of tons of glacier slowly sliding down the valley gouged out the valley down to the bedrock, so nothing grows there, yet.  The white mountain to the right is Dent du Geant (Giant's Tooth). Many, many Alps are named "something tooth."  

The peaks were just visible through the clouds. The glaciers are still thick at the highest altitudes, because they are deepest there, and have the lowest temperatures and the most snow. 

These peaks are part of the Mont Blanc massif, just to the north of it. As the air flows up the sides of the mountains, it cools down and the moisture condenses into clouds.  You can see the tree line in the lower right, where the green plants stop, leaving nothing but rock and ice and snow above.

The crazy thing about this checkout hike was that the soles of my boots started to detach at the toe. After a lot of hand-wringing, and discussion with the guides, I decided I had to buy new boots.  I thought this was a recipe for disaster, but the assured me that, if you get synthetic boots instead of leather, you won't have a break in period and it will be fine. I got the new boots at one of the many hiking equipment shops in Chamonix, and it all turned out fine in the end. 

The next day, we headed out of this valley and over the Col de Balme. A col means a mountain pass in French. This pass would take us over the Swiss border. This path was to the left (north) of the peaks in the photos above.  Here we are rising up out of the valley. The path was very steep for the first hour and a half or so. On the far right side of the photo, you can see a similarly steep path zigzagging up the far side of the valley.  

This is a view of the same Mont Blanc massif from the north, standing not far from where the photo above was taken.  The tree line is even more obvious in the lower left of this one. I guess it should really be called the plant line, flora line, or tree line.  A few plants survive quite a bit above the trees.  

As we neared the Col de Balme, a last look back over the valley below Mont Blanc, with a surprisingly large amount of development near Chamonix.  Again, we had a warmish but clear and sunny day. This was one of the hottest European summers in the last hundred years. The cool mountain air we'd been hoping for was warmer and more humid than usual, but still pleasant. 

The funny thing is, another guy on the trip had his boots fail on his way up this mountain, so he had to run back to town and buy new boots just like I did the night before!  

We had a great lunch stop at the Refuge de Col de Balme.  This was the view to the east from our picnic table. That's Switzerland, as we were practically sitting on the border.  The next couple of hours, we hiked around the bend, and all the way down that valley. 

Here's the view as we headed down the valley toward Forclaz. 

That night, we had dinner on the patio of our little mountain hotel. It was basic, but had good food and showers in the rooms. We appreciated showers in the rooms more and more as the days passed and we got to more basic accommodations deeper in the mountains. After dinner, we watched the sun set on the Triente Glacier. Another glacier that our guides had seen much further down the valley twenty years ago.  

The next day, we would be hiking up that valley to the altitude of the bulk of that glacier, then take a sharp left to cross the Fenetre d'Arpette, a pass with very steep and rough terrain on both sides. My next post is all about that hiking over that "fenetre" (French for "window"). It's called that because it's a narrow opening between two valleys.  

Click here to check out the photos from that hike. 

Click here to see the hike after that, from the Mont Fort mountain hut to the Prafleury mountain hut.

Click here to see our hike past Lac de Dix, over the Pas de Chevres, and into Arolla.