Haute Route Day 3 - Champex to cabane Louvie

Day 3 is the beginning of a 3-day high alpine connection between Champex and Arollo - the longest continuously high segment of the Haute Route, during which we'll stay in two alpine huts. We start this morning in a comparatively luxurious hotel with wifi, water, power, restaurants... all that stuff.

This was the cloudy morning view of Champex from our hotel porch. You can see mountains behind the clouds and the pretty little lake across the street.

Our travel bags, packed and waiting to be shipped by taxi to our next hotel, 3 days away from us. Meanwhile, in our backpacks, we had all the stuff we needed to hike the next 3 days and stay at alpine cabins for the next two nights. You can also see other bags for other hikers heading elsewhere.

Some people hike from Champex to Verbier, but that's part of the traditional 14-day route. We're cutting out a few stages to fit this trip into ten days... and that's one of them. So, we took a classic Swiss postal bus down a hairpin-laced road to a town in the valley.

Then we took a train to Le Châble, which is the town in the valley way below Verbier...

And then, completing the classic bus/train/up Swiss trifecta, we took a gondola up to Verbier, which cut out a small portion of the amount of elevation we'd gain during the day, and put us back at roughly the same height we'd started the day at in Champex.

Some take another gondola out of Verbier to cut out another 2000 feet of climbing, but we elected to start our hike there. We ran into a bit of a challenge when we discovered the trail we planned to use had been converted to a downhill mountain bike course. Rather than get run over, we found an alternate way out of town and up.

2000 feet later, above the tree line and very much in the cloud line.

That's the Mont Blanc starting to get visible through the clouds.

Voila.

... and we caught up with our guided group friends, who had started earlier than us and taken both gondolas up.

Mont Blanc.

Paraglider.

At the top of the pass for the hike, which a choice of options and Mont Blanc behind us.

Our view, and the choices. The Lac de Louvie to the left (with our cabin for the night at the tip) and an exciting descent toward the valley to the right). We went right, and then around.