Climbing Europe’s Tour du Mont Blanc was a completely completely different slice of European tradition for me: Coming upon a distant farmhouse-turned-thriving-cafe serving fantastic lunches…flowers and cows (with basic bells) scenically sprinkled all through…and an esprit de corps the place everyone seems to be like household.


As almost everybody hikes in the identical course (counter-clockwise), you change into mates with fellow hikers. It appeared like half the folks on the path have been from the US, and I met a lot of Seattleites.


And within the curiosity of mountaineering mild, lunches have been quite simple — only a sandwich from the lodge, possibly a carrot, a bit of fruit, and water. However upon reaching the mid-day summit, lunch was a marmot’s banquet. (Talking of marmots, we noticed no wildlife besides a few mice that had been squished underneath mountaineering boots on the path.)