Monday 31 August 2020
| Distance (km) | 13 kms | |||
| Distance (time) | 3.5 hrs | |||
| Climb / Descent | 240 / 240m | |||
| Hard / Soft surface | 70% / 30% | |||
| Landscape |
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| Weather |
 →  18° 4 Bft
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A new year and a new attempt to get a few kilometers closer to Nice. With the covid-19 crisis we didn't expect to walk at all in 2020, but now in September we are able to take some holidays.
Where in 2019 all mountain hutts after Samoëns were fully booked, they're now not even half full. We already noticed that to avoid crazy long stages we have to be creative and so we want to walk a first piece of the route as a day hike in order to shorten te next stage somewhat. And so, after we arrived in the bucketing rain on Sunday 30 August in Samoëns we immediate go walking on Monday. Fortunately it's dry and sunny now though still somewhat fresh. From the camping we walk along the river Giffre en pick up the GR5 a bit further on where we left it last year. Well, about 50m further south, but ok. Along the river there is a narrow strip of woods where the GR5 passes, a narrow track on the edge of the steep river bank. Just before Le Perret we leave the river and continue along the other side of the strip of woods, now with views over the pastures until we reacht the D907 to Sixt. Here we turn right and cross the river, immediately climbing to the hamlet Les Faix. We know we have some serious climbing today, but would this already be it? Apparently not, because after the hamlet we gently descend again after which we cross a small pasture. At the other side we have to turn right to the Ancient Tine Gorge. The road first climbs through the forest before suddenly entering the gorge with impressive rocks. The gorge climbs steeply and the other end is reached with 2 ladders. The path continues to climb and a 3rd ladder brings us at the highest point. Now comes the part we dislike the most: the descent. Due to the rains the path is steep, muddy and slippery and we're happy to be back down at the river. Just cross another pasture and we're at Pont des Nants. Here the GR5 turns right towards Refuge d'Anterne and we turn left to Sixt. So in principle we just have to go back, but we don't want to cross that bump again. So we walk a bit towards Sixt and then turn left to the river again. We more or less follow both the river and the D907 by following the signs to Samoëns. We cross the parking along the D907 and at the far end we descend over the gravel road. After a steep part the gravel road splits and most signposting goes left. But we suspect that will bring us back to the GR5 so we choose the right branch and keep descending behind a farm house before ending at a small tarmac road. We follow the tarmac to Le Perret where we hit the D907 again. From here it's just a matter of walking the GR5 in the opposite direction back to the camping. In order to continue tomorrow we need transport to Sixt and we do that using a on-demand bus. The tourist info gave us the telephone number to make a reservation and so we do: tomorrow at 9am in the downtown of Samoëns. We do have to park the car in Cluses though, because on return on Wednesday we don't want to wait for the one and only bus in the valley - it's so much more practical to have the car then. And so we do .... we drive to Cluses and park the car at the railway station to grab the 18:15 bus back to Samoëns. The only thing is .... the bus goes at 18:15 starting from September 1st and it's August 31st today. Hence, the bus leaves at 18:40. So we have to spend half an hour sitting in the sun, not really a punishment. In the end we're back at 19:30 at the camping site and we can starting packing the backpacks for tomorrow. |
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