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Something in the air

Author’s note: This is a continuation on my series of trekking La Vanoise National Park in the high Alps of France. To see all posts in this series, click here.

The glorious day only continued to improve. Each step I took made me feel more alive than I had in ages. There is something about hiking that gives me an enormous emotional high. It is funny as I’m a runner and the euphoric feeling I get from working my body strenuously is often the only thing that makes me feel whole. Being outside, breathing in fresh, pure air and feeling the sun on my face is perhaps the closest I’ll ever come to heaven.

Adventure Travel France Tour de Vanoise TRAVEL BY REGION Trekking/Hiking
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Rise and shine to another glorious day in the Alps

Author’s note: This is a continuation on my series of trekking La Vanoise National Park in the high Alps of France. To see all posts in this series, click here.

“Each day comes bearing its own gifts. Untie the ribbons.”  –Ruth Ann Schabacker

We rose at seven to a misty morning in the mountains. I was a new woman! I had finally slept. Yes I did it! I managed to sleep in a room of 40 fellow smelly hikers head-to-toe, all thanks to my new technique of using my long-sleeved shirt as a mummy wrap around my eyes and ears. Oh how good it felt to finally sleep! I was ready to seize the day…

Morning mist over the Alps gave a mystical effect.

Adventure Travel France Tour de Vanoise TRAVEL BY REGION Trekking/Hiking
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An evening escape watching mountains and marmots

Author’s note: This is a continuation on my series of trekking La Vanoise National Park in the high Alps of France. To see all posts in this series, click here.

All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me… You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you. – Walk Disney

L’Arpont refuge. About a ten-hour hike from our starting point in Pralognon-la-Vanoise.

After a long day of hiking we finally arrived at our destination for the night: l’Arpont refuge. From afar, it looked like an old rustic stone dwelling left over from the old days. Yet inside it was actually quite nice, with bright open windows overlooking the mountains, wood floors and ceilings and a beautiful bakery. Perhaps I’d get a better night’s sleep.

Adventure Travel France Tour de Vanoise TRAVEL BY REGION Trekking/Hiking
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Afternoon hike to l’Arpont refuge

Author’s note: This is a continuation on my series of trekking La Vanoise National Park in the high Alps of France. To see all posts in this series, click here.

The real beauty of realizing your true nature is in the freshness, peace and deep bodily relaxation which touches to the core of your being, flows into your everyday life and bursts forth naturally into blossoming from within itself. Without you ‘doing’ a thing about any of it.

This is a beautiful and simple change of lifestyle. A lifestyle of letting go and living openhandedly curled up in the sunlit warmth on the lap of the Divine (your heart). – Julie Sarah Powell

After another breathtaking picnic lunch in the heart of Vanoise National Park, we continued on to our accommodations for the night:  l’Arpont refuge. The terrain had become much more barren, rocky and remote.  By this point in our trek, we were at least seven or eight hours walk away from where we started back in the village of Pralognon la Vanoise.  The further away from civilization we got, the more my spirits soared.

A verdant valley far, far below.

Adventure Travel France Tour de Vanoise TRAVEL BY REGION Trekking/Hiking
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The hike to l’Arpont refuge: Morning

Author’s note: This is a continuation on my series of trekking La Vanoise National Park in the high Alps of France. To see all posts in this series, click here.

“I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.” -
John Burroughs

Morning clouds over the Col de la Vanoise.

After a rough night’s sleep, I gathered my wits and set off with our group a little past nine o’clock to the rising sun. The fresh air seemed to help immensely and draw me in. Soon, my three-hour night’s sleep was all but a distant dream and I was in my element. Embracing life and breathing it all in with each and every step.

Adventure Travel France Tour de Vanoise TRAVEL BY REGION Trekking/Hiking
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A rough night’s sleep in a French mountain hut

Author’s note: This is a continuation on my series of trekking La Vanoise National Park in the high Alps of France. To see all posts in this series, click here.

Sunset over Col de Vanoise.

If you have never been on a mountain hiking trip before, you probably haven’t been properly introduced to “les refuges” or mountain huts. Over the years of my travels, I have stayed at many, some nice and others not so nice. Mountain huts are generally basic shelters in which hikers can sleep and eat for the night at a relatively low cost. Normally mountain huts are quite rustic either with or without electricity, running water and adequate “loo’s”.

The nicest one I’ve ever stayed at was in Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park. This refugio (as it is called in Spanish) had heated indoor showers, “Western” toilets, decent food and separated bunks.  Some of the worst I’ve stayed at were in Nepal and Peru where a real live toilet was around the bend, under a bush and electricity was a distant dream.

Adventure Travel France Tour de Vanoise TRAVEL BY REGION Trekking/Hiking
Vanoise National Park, France
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Leaving the world behind in the heart of the French Alps

Author’s note: This is a continuation on my series of trekking La Vanoise National Park in the high Alps of France. To see all posts in this series, click here.

“There is pleasure in the pathless woods; There is rapture on the lonely shore; There is society, where none intrudes, by the deep sea and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more.” -Lord Byron

Our first site inside Vanoise National Park, France.

“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

I read this quote and couldn’t think of a more fitting way to begin my journey inside the heart and soul of Vanoise National Park. If you haven’t guessed by now, my preferred method of seeing and exploring a new place is on foot. Many of my recent travels abroad have involved hiking. I experienced the highs and lows of rural village life in the Himalayas of Nepal on foot. I explored the wild wind and crazy weather of the southern tip of Patagonia on foot. I followed the ancient Incan trail of knee-busting stone steps on foot. And, I explored glaciers, mountains and volcanoes of Peru, Guatemala, Iceland and New Zealand all on foot.

If I’m not moving, I’m not really there. I like to feel where I am. I like to see with my eyes wide open, the amazing beauty of this incredibly diverse and sensational earth and its people. I like to smell the flowers and feel the rough earth below my weary feet. There is no better way to travel the world than on foot.

Adventure Travel France Tour de Vanoise TRAVEL BY REGION Trekking/Hiking
Vanoise National Park, France
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Morning hike to Vanoise National Park

 

Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.” – Mark Jenkins

We rose after a glorious, wine and french-food induced sleep to the brilliant sunshine blanketing Pralognan-la-Vanoise’s lush alpine valley. After a long, tiring journey, it felt like heaven to finally sleep. Our “rucksacks” (as the Brits call them) were packed and ready to go. My body and soul were ready, eager and anxious to begin. I could hardly wait to begin the journey.

Adventure Travel France Tour de Vanoise TRAVEL BY REGION Trekking/Hiking
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Tour de la Vanoise: Our starting point Pralognan-la-Vanoise

Author’s note: This post is a continuation of my series on trekking La Tour de la Vanoise in the French Alps. For previous post, click here. 

Lovely, quaint Pralognan-la-Vanoise, a mountain town located in the heart of Savoie in the French Alps.

After our unexpected afternoon in Geneva (for post click here), we returned to the airport to meet our guide Mark along with the other two guests joining us on our trek through La Tour de la Vanoise. Our group would be small, only four trekkers along with our own, personal mountain guide, France-based Brit, Mark of Simply Savoie.

Isn’t this what you envision a French Alpine village to look like?

Adventure Travel France Tour de Vanoise TRAVEL BY REGION Trekking/Hiking
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Sumptuous Savoie: The heart of Vanoise

Our week-long trek through the peaks and valleys of the French Alps took place in the beautiful eastern Rhône-Alpes region of France known as Savoie (pronounced “saw-vwa”). 

Logo of Savoie (Wikipedia).

Savoie, along with neighboring Haute-Savoie, has a long, fascinating history as a prosperous kingdom known as Savoy that was annexed by France in 1860. Savoy existed as an autonomous country for almost a thousand years and its traditional boundaries have not changed since the annexation (placed at the crossroads of the Alps in the eastern part of France, west of Italy and south of Switzerland. See map below).

 

Adventure Travel France Tour de Vanoise TRAVEL BY REGION Trekking/Hiking