After a great sleep we got up and had breaky at our hotel, mmmmm great coffee and the croissants melt in your mouth. We geared up then went for a short walk to fill up our hydration packs with fresh mountain water and then started our hike. From the town of Alpe d'Huez we ascended a nice trail that lead us to a series of trails which made their way past 5 stunning alpine lakes. We did a fair amount of climbing, and it was hot - the hottest temp I saw on my watch was 38.6 degs. But the views more than made up for the effort....here are a few of the many pics that I took today, but they really don't do it justice.
We arrived at our turn around point, we can in search of the Wizzard, but sadly, he wasn't here :-(
We took a different way back down that treated us to some amazing views along the way. At one point we got buzzed by the local Search and Rescue patrol, it was pretty cool.
It was hot and we had been out for about 4.5 hours, so we knew that we needed some food and drink. We decided to find some shade and have a French picnic. We stopped at a local store and picked all of this up....for about $10....you certainly can't do that at home!
After our picnic we headed out of town in another direction to check out some ancient ruins....I believe they are Roman, but have to confirm. There was a whole group of students who are currently excavating more ruins. We climbed up a hill to check out an ancient church site, as well as an old fortification, that was used to keep an eye on the valley.
On the way back to town we checked out what has been called the worlds scariest airport to fly into and out of. It's a short strip that is perched on the side of the mountain. The runway is on an insane angle, you have to land flying towards the mountain, and land on a runway that slopes up. Then you have to take off downhill and hope you have enough speed before you run out of runway and plummet several thousand feet. The pics aren't great, but Google it or look on YouTube....the guys that fly into and out of here have some serious balls!
By now we were pretty spent.....20kms of mountain hiking and the temp was never below 35. Nice cold showers then we went out for a quick bite to eat. Oh yeah, most of our hiking was at over 2,000 meters. We did ok considering we just came form about 80 meters above sea level, and the jet lag. Now it's bed time.....tomorrow, we're off to Italy for some time on the Med.
