Saturday June 29th
Alpes de Chaux, Frience and Solalex
Our last walk together on this trip to Patrick and Ann's chalet. Again, suggested by Patrick, this was a walk directly from the chalet's front door. Rather than taking the waymarked path (David's mistake!) we zig-zagged our way up the road through the chalets on the way up to La Croix. David would learn, the next day, that if a footpath was marked on the map, it would be very clear on the ground and would almost certainly be waymarked. Nevertheless, on reaching La Croix, we dropped down to Alpe des Chaux and then to Frience. From there, it was a pleasant walk though fields and woods to Solalex.
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| En route to Solalex. Arête d'Argentine to our right |
On the way, we passed a herd of grey cows camouflaged as rocks.
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| Cows and a rock |
At Sololex we had lunch at the Refuge de Solalex. Jacinta had the Croûte au Fromage (a fancy and very large cheese on toast) and David had Fondue aux Tomates (Servie avec des pommes de terre). This, also, was very large and, although they were very nice, the pommes were entirely superfluous.
The return walk retraced the walk in for a couple of kilometres but then followed a pleasant path passing though tracts of wildflowers.
The only marginal downside, literally, of this walk, was that it took us to the cenre of La Barboleuse, meaning that we had 150m ascent back to the chalet. Fortunately, the footpath was much more direct than the zig-zag road and we had been fueled by a great lunch.
A walk of 9.2 miles with 600m ascent.
