A call with Humphrey this morning reminded me of this excellent trip that dates back to 2012, the above picture featuring Roy and Susan at Col de Vallonpierre, 2607 metres, on 8 September 2012.
For anyone looking for a fine ‘hut to hut’ route of up to a fortnight in the Alps, this could be a great choice. Kev Reynolds’ Cicerone guide provides all the information you should need, and the Parc National des Écrins 1:50000 scale hiking map covers the entire route.
If you are planning to go in August, it may be best to book the mountain huts in advance, but outside that month it’s simply courteous to call ahead to let the guardian know that you will be arriving. The hut guardians are usually happy to do this for you.
Huts vary regarding bookings – some (possibly most these days) can be booked by email, or once they have opened reservations can be made by ‘phone. Due to increasing instances of ‘no-shows’ many huts now require payment of a deposit, often by bank transfer. This isn’t really practical for UK visitors due to high bank charges. We’ve solved this problem in the past by agreeing to confirm our reservation by ‘phone a couple of days before arrival.
If you are going as a group you do get piece of mind by taking the trouble to book in advance. If you then get delayed by bad weather you’d have to undergo a session of phone calls to adjust the bookings – luckily in nearly forty years of Alpine trips this has yet to happen to me.
For anyone interested, my contemporaneous GR54 blog postings are here.
Have fun in the Alps! If you go to the Écrins this September say hello to Humphrey if you bump into him. Have a great trip, HMP3!
PS Conrad has kindly commented, with this link to his own diary of a 1999 trip that I know will be of interest to Humphrey, and others who are familiar with Conrad's adventures.
I've finally composed an Index - click here for the Index of these postings.
4 comments:
Well that brought back some memories. The tour of the Ecrins was the first of several of my GR walks at the age of 59 back in August 1999. I have just read my journal which was written in a Microsoft Word document before I converted to Mac. It is full of naive wonderment at things I would now perhaps not even comment on, and reading between the lines attitudes to carrying of weight and availability of lightweight gear has changed even from that time. The journal is, I must say a bit boring but if anybody wants to have look here is a Dropbox link to the Word document which I hope will be readable - I will test it now and if not will try and find some other method.:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kuwqm9q4p8f5z6p/Munr21GR54%20Ecrins.doc?dl=0
The document is well readable, and in case you think you are getting bogged down it lasts for 10 pages - feel free to quit at any time!
It's a tedious job, Conrad, but not as tedious as watching Australia v Denmark. My labours (almost finished) should result in a much more readable series of postings. I've enjoyed re-reading them myself - a necessary part of the process as editing in blogger starts with blogger's automatic erasure of any previous formatting of paragraphs etc.
I'm surprised to have discovered quite high page load stats for these postings.
Your link works fine, Conrad, and I've inserted a link in the main text. I shall enjoy reading that account.
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