After a lovely rest day, it was back to hiking today. We hiked down to the tiny village of Arolla and stopped to buy some items for lunch.  The next stop was a post office where some members of our group mailed two packages of stuff from their backpacks in order to “lighten their loads.” After that, we started hiking to La Sage.  While the day’s hike started with more uphill than we had anticipated, we eventually got up to a beautiful meadow surrounded by mountain peaks. Kris and I immediately thought “the hills are alive with the sound of music.”   Eventually we hiked down into the town of Les Haudères and stopped for a cold drink before making our final ascent up to La Sage. After our refreshment stop, we had about an hour hike up the mountain to La Sage. We are staying at the Hotel de La Sage which is where we stayed eight years ago. It is just as lovely as we remembered.  After showers and washing some clothes, we had time for some drinks on the patio.   The delicious “half board”

As I mentioned in the last post, it was the memory of our stay eight years ago at The Grand Hôtel and Kurhaus that helped propel us through the last two days. We were all excited to spend our rest day at this beautiful hotel that was built in 1896. The hotel was the first in the valley and was the vision of Honorine and her husband Jean-Baptiste Gaspoz. To read more about the history, read here:  https://www.grandhotelkurhaus.com/en/hotel-history/ The space is spectacular and luckily more modern items like TVs have NOT been added to the rooms, so hotel still honors the Gaspozs’ dream of creating a sanctuary for travelers.  Oh, we so love our European breakfasts especially on the layover days when we can eat in leisure.  One of the other important tasks for the day was washing all of our clothes. We washed them in the sink and then hung them out in the sun to dry. A few members of our group also went through everything in their backpacks again to re-evaluate each item. Funny how a coupl

The next morning we got up at 5:15 am and got ready for another tough day of hiking. Once again, one of the most important parts of that preparation is taping up the toes.  In our collective memories from our Haute Route trip eight years ago, this was the stage we dreaded the most! This stage has lots of exposure including a series of ladders - the thought of attempting the ladders and chains in rain, wind, and/or lightening had me worried. However, we were so thankful when we got up that the  storm had passed through and the sun was shining.  Right out of the gate, we had to climb a first col, Col de Roux which was at 9,200 ft. I think the combination of an early start and residual fatigue from the day before meant a slow start for several of us. But once we reached the top, we were rewarded with a beautiful view of Lac Des Dix. Our hike today would take us all the way down to the shores of the lake, then to the end of the lake, and up to the next col that you can see as the passagewa