June 10th: Arpettaz Loop

 We woke up to sunshine! Well, we’d already committed to stay for 2 nights and the extra rest would let me get rid of the jet lag that was still lingering despite taking melatonin pills. After breakfast, Xiaoqin left to climb Col de la Madeline while the rest of us drove up the road, noting the steepness of the gradient and the sizeable numbers of cyclists who were riding up the road.

The route that Arturo picked started off with a stiff climb, crossing a couple of rivers. Despite the recent heat wave (and what felt like a coming heat wave), there was still unmounted snow in the shadows of the tall mountains. In fact, though we did not know it at the time, this was the last time we would feel cool or even cold at the time.

As the trail rose, we got grand views of the taller peaks around us. The thing about the Col de la Madeline area is that it’s not frequently touristed, so even the ski resort on the other side wouldn’t start running lifts until June 25^th for hiking, long after we had left the area. That made the place isolated. We saw maybe a handful of other hikers the entire hike, and had the place mostly to ourselves.

With vistas abound it was hard to keep a fast pace on the hike, and we stopped frequently for pictures, with me wishing I had charged my Ricoh GR3 the night before and having to borrow a battery bank from Arturo to keep it running.

We finished around 1:00pm and drove down to meet Xiaoqin, who’d made the mistake of ordering a sit down meal at a French restaurant, which despite the occasional sun made her cold while eating since the time between courses was indeterminable. When Boen helped her finished desert she could keep climbing up the pass. The rest of us drove to an EV charging station next to a supermarket. Since it was a medium fast charger, we could get the car charged to 85% during a half hour supermarket lunch.

After lunch, we drove back to the hotel to get our swimming things. Bowen, Boen, Arturo and I went to the swimming pool only to be told that our swim suits were not regulation. We’d have to buy their swimming trunks. It was already 3pm, and the water slides weren’t running either, so Boen opted out and we did a walk to the Siphon waterfalls, which were interesting, occasionally pulsing due to a natural siphon effect that was preserved despite all the mitigation measures that had to be taken to keep the stream from flooding the town.

It was a short but worthy walk. I had time to take the EV for a drive to the laundry machine and use it. We planned to ride the Col de la Madeline the next morning and stay on the other side at St Jean Maurienne or even St Michel Maurienne so we could tackle Col Telegraf the next day.