Tour du Mont Blanc Day 2 - Les Houches to Contamines via Chapel

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
8/22/2019	8.3 miles	4 hours 41 minutes	959' ascent, 3,017' descent	1.8 mph	339.8

Today we had two route choices, and we chose the variant with less elevation gain. Tomorrow is going to be tough, so we need to save our energy. Today's hike still had a lot of steep descents, though on easy paths. My right knee was in pain on the downhills. It must have been yesterday's 5,000' descent catching up to me. I had brought a knee brace with me in my suitcase, but didn't have it in my backpack. After yesterday's slow hike, today our time matched how long our route sheet said it would take - 4 hours and 41 minutes. The actual day did take longer - we walked to a gondola and took a gondola ride. This gondola held more people, so there was a longer wait to get on. Breakfast didn't start until 7:30am so we got started a little later too. Breakfast starts at a set time everywhere, usually at 7am. Today was less about the views, and more about walking through small towns. Everywhere people plant flowers. Window boxes are popular - they even have them on bridges.

Today's hike had more road walking - some on rough gravel roads, some on tarmac. Our day ended in Contamines. In general, it is pretty easy to follow the trail. We spent most of the day walking not too far behind a woman that we had met yesterday. I noticed that she zigzagged across the trail on the downhills. I assume she did this to reduce wear and tear on her knees, so I started trying this too. It works well when the trail is wide like it often was today. There were not many people on the trail today. I'm wondering if most people took the route via Chalet des Miage instead of the route via Chapel.

I did sometimes have problems finding the hotels. Using google maps helped us in a few situations. We got to our hotel very early, before our luggage did. So we went into the center of town & got extra food at a grocery store. We brought a lot of food with us on this trip. We had heard that energy bars aren't widely available. Glen always eats Cliff bars while hiking, so he brought a couple of boxes of them in his suitcase. We also weren't sure if we'd have a problem with getting vegan food for dinner, so we brought a small electric kettle and some dehydrated backpacking meals. We could have gotten away with not bringing these, but they were nice to have. So, we had a long wait until our dinner at 7pm. We took showers and then a long nap. Dinner ended late, and we went to bed shortly after it. Tomorrow is a long day.

I think this was outside a tourist office. I didn't think the trail had a "start." We noticed guided groups meeting here.

A quiet auberge. We saw 1 person sitting outside.

Road walking

Our zigzagging friend

Water was plentiful almost everywhere on this hike. Public water supplies like this were common on the trail.

We saw some sheep on this trip, but cattle were much more common.

Church in Contamines. Our hotel directions were in relationship to a church. I yet again couldn't figure out where our hotel was based on our guide sheet's directions. Google maps to the rescue.

View from tonight's hotel room