We’ll sing and we’ll dance and bid farewell to France

Beat says this is his last PTL. Of course I don’t believe him.

I’ve spent the past two weeks with Beat in France and Switzerland. It was a whirlwind trip with lots of hiking, working, social time, eating, and very little sleep. I haven’t had the mental capacity for writing and I still don’t, but I wanted to drop in and share some photos from a gorgeous week near the Chamonix Valley.

This was Beat’s ninth time starting the Petite Trotte à Léon, a 306-kilometer loop around Mont Blanc with more than 25,000 meters (82,000 feet!) of elevation gain. On paper it seems doable, but what makes this event difficult to impossible is the terrain — a mix of everything from class-one paths to class-five scrambling — with tight cutoffs that mean the difficult sections must be completed in all weather at any time of day or night on precious little sleep. Participants must travel in teams for safety reasons. It’s a mountaineering challenge disingenuously sold as a peer to the trail-running races that happen in tandem — UTMB et al. I present the following photo — captured by Beat’s teammate Daniel as the three negotiated a sharktooth ridge on this year’s PTL course — as evidence of my claims that class-five scrambling is involved. At least helmets, harnesses, and microspikes are a requirement now. Safety gear was all but laughed at when I naively attempted PTL in 2013.

I could write a long essay about my persistent hatred (and yes, the word hatred is not too strong) for PTL, and you know what, I probably will. But for now, I will just say that Beat loves this event and I begrudgingly go along with it, although my support becomes increasingly limited with each passing year. I used to follow him along the course, driving many narrow mountain roads and providing emotional support and snacks where I could. Now that crew support is expressly forbidden, I join Beat for the trip to Chamonix mainly so I can go for long hikes in the valley while trying not to follow his tracker too obsessively.

When we arrived in the Valley on Saturday, Aug, 24, I was low-functioning. Jet lag, ongoing recovery from my birthday run, and a harsh bout of allergies that I believe are connected to Beat’s mom’s cat left me barely able to walk 2.7 miles on Friday. Come Saturday, Beat and Pieter dragged me up the vertical mile to La Jonction, a close-up view of the Bossons and Taconnaz glaciers. It’s a gorgeous spot and worth the strenuous effort, but it comes with a dose of melancholy because I first stood here in 2016, and my memories remind me that the ice has melted substantially in just eight years. This glacier might disappear in my lifetime. In my melancholy, I feel a flicker of morbid hope that I won’t live long enough to witness such things.

The guys spent Sunday preparing for their race start. I whittled away the afternoon purposefully logging another vertical mile in a thick fog that had settled in over the valley. I was somewhere above Les Houches, seeing nothing, but enjoying the ethereal peacefulness of it all. Every time I visit the Alps, I tend to be consumed by a desire to log all of the vert, going as high as I can. Indeed, across nine days in France, I managed to log 36,000 feet of climbing in 94 miles. It felt like a lot, and yet it’s not even half of what PTL demands in six days. The stats alone continue to boggle, and I know enough about PTL to understand that the stats mean nothing.

After the guys started their race on Monday morning, I took on an ambitious 6,000-foot ascent to Cabane des Rognes. The fog was again thick but began to clear when I reached an altitude of 8,000 feet, already into the rocky high-alpine zone of the Mont Blanc massif. I knew this route was ambitious for me — I’d done it once before with Beat — but I’d forgotten how technical and exposed the final 1,000 feet were.

Here’s an example of the exposure: Handrails, chains, and other protective equipment make this a “hiking” trail, but it is airy. Here the footing along the slabs wasn’t great, and there’s at least 800 feet of air below the edge. I typically don't attempt such routes as this because I don’t know how my brain will react. Sometimes it’s okay, and sometimes the vertigo sets in so deeply that my vision darkens around the edges and my head spins, to a degree that my body becomes nonfunctional. I can’t trust my brain, and thus I can’t trust myself to manage these routes. But on this day I had no issues. I felt calm, happy, and safe. I can’t explain it. I only wish I could feel this way always.

Sadly, this comfort was short-lived. I looped around on a trail that drops to Le Nid d’Aigle, which is the high station of the Mont Blanc tramway. A lot of construction is happening at the station, so my planned route was blocked off. Increasingly confusing arrows guided me down into the fog and along a precipitous ledge. The visibility was worse than it looks in this photo and a creeping disorientation reignited my vertigo. Just as I thought my brain might deteriorate into a full panic, the trail dropped onto the tracks of the Mont Blanc tramway, which themselves are carved into a cliff. Travel along the tracks is forbidden and arguably more dangerous than anything else I’d done thus far — if a train approached, I would need to press my body as flat as I could against the cliff to avoid being smushed because the operator was unlikely to see me in this fog. But I reasoned that a train likely wouldn't come at this late hour when the upper station was under so much construction. I was right, but it was a dicey mile. I couldn’t run because the rocks surrounding the tracks were so large and loose.

I arrived at the Mont Lachet station to find the last train of the day paused on the tracks. I was already running late to meet my friends, so I approached the guy closing up the small station and asked to buy a ticket, assuming the train must end up somewhere in the vicinity of Les Houches. I purchased my ticket and sat on the train as it lurched toward Bellevue before finally asking another passenger where we were going. “St. Grevais,” he answered. St. Grevais was on the other side of the mountain. It just happened to be where I was heading that night, but my car was on the wrong side of a 30-minute drive. Disappointed, I stepped off the train at its next stop and jogged the final 5 miles home.

I met up with my friends Rob and Ali, British expats who have lived in the Chamonix Valley for about a decade and recently built a new home in St. Grevais. Of the places within a 30-minute drive of Chamonix, this valley is where I’ve spent the least time, so I was excited about further explorations. Of course, I had also agreed to work all week. I don’t know why I did this to myself. My work is for an Alaska newspaper and happens on deadline, so my shifts stay on Alaska time. This meant working from 10 p.m. to as late as 5 a.m. overnight. The schedule gave me ample time for hiking, but no time for sleeping. It proved overwhelming as week two drew to a close in Switzerland.

But during week one, I was still relatively functional and squeezing in hikes whenever I could. On Tuesday my shift stretched across ten hours and I only had a two-hour window for an outing. I drew up a random six-mile loop out of Les Contamines that took me to the scene in the photo above. It’s almost impossible to find a boring route in these valleys.

On Wednesday morning, Ali invited me to join her hiking club for their weekday outing. I didn’t ask many questions about it. She made it sound like her hiking club was casual and slow, so I didn’t pack much water or food. I figured it would be an easy day. But on this day, the only other member of the club to turn up was Ann, a 67-year-old Brit who had planned the hike — an incredibly tough 9-mile route with nearly 5,000 feet of climbing in the Arvais Range near Sallanches. It was all I could do to keep up with Ann. I gave it my best shot, and still, she left me in the dust, wheezing and wishing I’d packed twice as much water for the ascent of this dry, chossy moraine. If have to live long enough to see the glaciers melt, maybe at least I could grow up to be a 67-year-old like Ann. But I’m already so far behind, I’m never going to catch up.

The views from Col Doran were incredible, indeed worth the effort. I especially appreciated my snack, a vegan cheese and veggie sandwich. One big advantage of staying with Rob and Ali was sharing their delicious vegan food. Usually, my fare in Europe is entirely made up of cheese, pasta, bread, sugar, and cured meats. Eating relatively healthfully for a week is probably the only thing that helped me survive an otherwise deleterious schedule.

Thursday again brought more tight scheduling, as I agreed to help out a friend of Rob’s who needed models for a film he is making about bikepacking. I made a quick trip toward Mont Joly, as far as I could go in 2.5 hours. While the climb to Mont Joly isn’t the most scenic route in the valley, it’s one of my favorites. The steady 20-30%-grade switchbacks climb a grassy slope with no talus or scree, only hero dirt. So it’s easy to climb quickly, which is great for the ego. Despite my tired legs, I managed 4 miles and 3,300 feet of gain in just over 90 minutes, and then I was able to descend the trail with ease in an hour. In that hour I even took the time to pause and visit a group of friendly horses who were so personable that I wished I could ride one home.

The fake bikepacking trip was fun. We loaded bikes on the gondola to Prarion, about 2,500 feet above Les Houches. We set up tents, sat around our fake campfire ring to chat and tell jokes, and cooked real freeze-dried meals that weren’t bad. (The freeze-dried meal company is the sponsor of this film. I regretfully have forgotten the name of the company.)

Just as the last useful light faded, we hopped on the bikes to zoom down the 2,500-foot descent toward St. Grevais. The experience was the opposite of strenuous. It was delightful.

Day … six? Friday? Finally, my work week was over and I had time for another longer hike, so 6,000 feet up to Refuge du Plan Glacier — a high mountain hut below Mont Blanc — seemed in order. This was another steep one, gaining all of that altitude in just five miles, but there was nothing overly technical about the ascent and it was fun to end up near 9,000 feet.

The refuge is pretty much stapled to the side of the cliff. It’s difficult to imagine where the mountaineers continue from there.

I only saw two other people along the upper half of the route, and about a dozen ibex. The Chamonix Valley is such a human zoo during UTMB week. I was glad for the opportunity to spend my time in sleepy St. Grevais, eating well, making animal friends, and enjoying Seinfeld reruns with Rob and Ali.

On Friday evening, Rob, Ali, and I pedaled into St. Grevais to watch UTMB runners come through. It seemed like the entire town came out to watch the event. It’s so different from the scenes you typically see at ultra-races in the United States. For most events, nobody but the participants themselves knows or cares about the runners coming through town. Here, ultrarunning is the major sporting event of late summer. St. Grevais is only 13 miles into the 104-mile race, but already runners were spread out by more than two hours. It made for a long and exciting parade while we sipped drinks at a local bar.

On Saturday, the guys came through Les Contamines on their PTL route. Despite the no crewing rule, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to simply spectate their arrival. I borrowed Rob’s bike, pedaling uphill to the route and hiking for a short while before I found them. They were insistent on buying a hot meal in town, which surprised me because restaurants in France always suck up loads of time. They had the time to spare, but still, I couldn’t understand why they’d justify burning any spare time at a restaurant. At that point, even I was so sleep-deprived that I was fantasizing about bedtime and caring little about food. As it turned out, the guys got a little of both at the restaurant, and it was a delicious meal. I had a salad and the guys had burgers. We all had ice cream and then the guys wandered into the dark with very full stomachs two hours after arriving.

Team “Too Dumb to Quit” finished the PTL just before 8 a.m. Sunday morning. They broke into a full sprint at the finish line and I almost missed them. (In posting this photo, I just noticed that our other Chamonix-residing British friend Stephen is standing and clapping on the other side of the fence. Hi Stephen!)

This was Beat’s eighth PTL finish out of nine starts since 2012. Pieter and Daniel are usually his PTL partners, but often it’s one or the other. The other times all three started, one of them had to drop out. 2024 was the first time all three were able to finish together.

Beat swears this will be his last PTL. The courses have become too hard for hard’s sake, with too much arbitrary vert crammed in just to pad the stats, and Beat lamented that he’s becoming “too slow.” I don’t believe this, and I don’t believe it will be his last. But one can dream. Meanwhile, I’ll pretend this was my last visit to the Chamonix Valley, going out with a bang, while secretly hoping it’s far from the last.