Day 1- Bourg St. Pierre to Gran San Bernardo Pass - Monday June 15, 2015

Day 1 Bourg St.Pierre to Gran San Bernardo Pass Monday June 15, 2015

Posted a day late because Hotel Italia had used up its billing period data and turned off the wifi.

We sat on the balcony of our hotel room last night looking out over the Alps

 and where we would be walking today thinking of sitting on the balcony of our room at St. Jean Pied du Port almost 2 years ago looking out at the Pyrenees we were to climb the first day of the Camino. It certainly was stirring up the same amount of excitement, trepidation, and longing.

The day began with a 3.2 magnitude earthquake at Bourg St. Pierre that shook the hotel.  We were very happy that the mountains were sunny and clear and the morning temperature a pleasant 9 degrees. Down at breakfast we met the Belgium couple who were motorcycling to Austria.  When we parted I was very touched when she said ‘God bless you and your journey’.

We set off at exactly 8am and the walk was predicted to take 4 hours, which would work out perfectly because the forecast for Gran San Bernardo Pass was possible thundershowers in the afternoon. We knew exactly where to set out having done some sightseeing the day before. At km 1.4 we were to watch for a wooden ‘deviation’ sign pointing to a small unpaved road that descends among the pines and then cross a concrete bridge at the bottom and start climbing up to the Toules Dam.

We needed a bridge to cross to the other side of the beautiful gorge/stream we were walking along. We never saw the sign, and there were no pine trees to be seen in the forest. There was a dirt road but all the hiker markings were pointing straight ahead.  At km 3 we arrived at the dam and were annoyed that the instructions didn’t say what to do if the detour was cleared up.  There was a bridge over the gorge where we were and it looked like we would go up a road on the other side to join the trail, but the area was full of bulls.  I asked Russell to stay with me on the road but right away he took off after we got on the other side of the electric fence –he had a red shirt on so I wondered how much protection he could provide anyway- and I decided this wasn’t going to work for me (after my up close and personal experience with the cows on the Dingle Way, and they were no bulls), so after a lot of complaining and resistance from Russell, we turned around and went off in search of the detour.  That ended up costing us at least 3km and a lot of time debating what to do.  We decided the detour was at that dirt road we had seen –even though now there was no sign -when we saw the German pilgrim on it that we had met at Bourg St. Pierre on Sunday. When the trail on the other side got back to the dam we saw that the road we planned to take through the bulls did indeed join up with the one we were on. And it would have been maybe 250 meters from the dam. Damn.  However, we had far less, but not ‘no’ interaction with the bulls.  A car came along the road as we got there spoofing a bunch of bulls that started running toward us, but they got spoofed by us and stopped dead in their tracks.

Just around the dam we caught up with the German pilgrim, talked a bit, and passed him.  We experienced more trouble with the instructions after that, for example they were mixing up left and right, which was disquieting. For the first four days we don’t have the GPS tracks for the route, but after that we do, so hopefully the days with the GPS files will go better.  It just caused long delays deliberating over what to do.  We did see the German pilgrim in the distance behind us a few times though, which was encouraging. In the end we walked 16.1km instead of 11.5km, as the instructions indicated, and climbed 1157 meters in about 9km.  We climbed the last 400 meters up in snow

, which was very difficult footing, and prior to that much of the incline was covered in runoff water from the melting snow in the mountains.

Today was twice the accent grade as on the Camino the first day, where we climbed 1240 meters in 18km. Because of the delays, we didn’t get to the spot where started climbing through the pass until 12:30, and by then it started to pour.  The instructions said we would climb 850 meters, but they didn’t include climbing back up the declines, just the net gain. All in all it was very exhausting but very exhilarating.  The view was magnificent and there is much satisfaction for old folks like us to actually be able to do it!

Neither of us had any problem with 2,473 meter altitude, but I certainly would have preferred not to be sneezing and having my nose and ears plugged the whole way. I’ve been pouring hydrogen peroxide in my ears since getting off the planes but I don’t think my ears will pop until my sinuses get unblocked.

As soon as we got to the hotel we both had a shower in lukewarm water. Then off to the Grand Saint Bernard Hospice, church, and museum.

All excellent. Other than the cold-water, it is a beautiful, grand hotel with excellent food again.  We had gnocchi in blue cheese sauce, veal with ham and fontane cheese, and timamisu for supper. Unfortunately the wine wasn’t included this time, but we splurged on a bottle of 1995 Barbaresco which was truly magnificent, well deserved, and worth every euro we paid for it.