A little while later, we came up on some goats with their kids. This is a classic example of aerial perspective, which was first used in art by Leonardo DaVinci. He used to mock other artists who painted with the same color of green for trees in the distance as trees in the foreground.
They were curious and came close to the (potentially) electrified fence to take a closer look at us. We saw these electric fences everywhere, but never got shocked. They were just colorful nylon ribbons connected to a car battery, maybe. Most of them weren't on. But the animals learned to steer clear of them from times when they had been on. He looks very dashing with that stylish collar.
On the hike from the ski (and mountain biking) town of Verbier to the Mont Fort hut, we had early views of the a high mountain with a big glacier called Gran Combin. Huge bunches of these purple flowers were growing wild wherever we hiked on this trip.
The next morning, we started probably the hardest day of the hike. There were three passes. I think we got going by 6:30 in the morning to be sure we had enough time. The stay in Mont Fort included a big dinner with good food and wine, and six-person bunk bed rooms. They had only four shared showers. The showers had a timer that lasted only two minutes. But, it turned out there was lots of water pressure and hot water, and the timer didn't count if you turned off the water. So, it really wasn't an issue at all.
This is the view looking back at Mont Fort after about ten minutes of hiking. This whole area is used for skiing in winter. They have snow makers built into the mountain in case there's not much snow, which happens more often these days.
In this area, our guide Dan told us we needed to stay fifteen feet apart and stay silent, so we could hear if any rocks started to fall towards the group. We had all heard about a tragic incident in Italy earlier a few weeks before, where ice holding the rocks on the side of the valley melted, and released a rockslide.
Mont Fort is way below at this point. That's Greg, then Larry, with Benee coming up behind.
It got very rocky for a while. Even with the painted trail blazes it wasn't easy to see which way to go. Just before this picture, Carol slipped and split her lip on a rock that was near face level (it being so steep there). After that happened, our guide Dan came back to help. Here he is helping others find the best way through. You can get an idea of how steep it is by the way Larry (blue jacket) is standing.
After hiking down the other side of the pass and toward our second pass, we had this view of Gran Combin, with it's glacier, on the far side of the valley. This is the same mountain we saw on the way into Mont Fort the previous afternoon. You can see a meltwater lake just below, on our side of the valley. When we left lunch, we went the opposite direction from all that, uphill toward our second pass of the day.
Almost to the second pass of the day. Chris and Benee in the lead there, with Robyn third.
As we came up over the second pass, we saw this ibex sitting in the sun on some rocks. We only saw about four of these in all the days we were in the Alps. I saw "only" because a family hiking the same route said they had seen about fifty ibex hanging around the Prafleuri hut at dawn two years before. They had close up pictures. I was very jealous.
We had a stream crossing on the way to the next pass. The water was from the nearby melting glacier, so it was ice cold. Since it was over a foot deep in places, we all took off our boots and socks and crossed it barefoot. The water quickly froze my feet, so the rocks on the bottom were pretty painful! One of my biggest photographic failures of the trip - you see me in the foreground, panicking and stuffing my camera and phone away before I even took a single photo of the crossing. Luckily, Benee had the presence of mind to take this one.
Anyway, we finally made it to the Prafleuri Pass. The signs have times of how long the Swiss authorities expect each hike to take. Our group was always somewhat slower than those times, and we were moving at a good pace. Those times are if you hike fast, and don't stop for water or snacks.
The view from this pass was great. I believe that's the Prafleuri Glacier taking up much of the scene.
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This was the view on the way down from the pass. The hut we're hiking to is out of sight in the valley in the lower right of the photo.
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On the final part of the hike, we had to cross the alluvial plain, where the water draining from the glacier created a valley of braided streams and sandbars. In winter this would be usually be snow-covered, and in spring, there would be raging rivers of melting snow.
This is a closeup of a beautiful sandbar created of fine stone particles created by the grinding of billions of tons of glacial ice across the valley floor. These fine particles are deposited along the stream bottom as the water travels down the valley. Branching like this reminds me how the same patterns are seen different places in nature. Leonardo DaVinci remarked on it in his notebooks; about how these are like the branches of a tree, the delta of a river, and veins in humans and animals.
Late that afternoon, we made it to the Prafleuri mountain hut. At this one, the entire group of fourteen of us stayed in one large room, with beds laid out on either side of an aisle down the middle, like in an orphanage, except there was no space between the beds. You had to crawl off the end of your mattress to avoid stepping on the person lying next to you. When you're deep in the mountains, a warm bed and a hot meal with a glacial waterfall as backdrop is pretty good. I was too exhausted to bother, but Benee took this photo of our room.
That's all for our epic Mont Fort to Prafleuri hut hike. This is the third post on our Haute Route hiking trip in the French and Swiss Alps.
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