After all the months of planning and training, we're off! Our backpacks are packed with everything we're taking packed in plastic inside.
While we tried to be really careful about the weight, we know that we still probably have too much! We anticipating there might be some reluctant "shedding" of items once we are confronted with climbing 5000 vertical feet in one day! That's why all the books call this a "strenuous" hike:-). Funny, what seems essential now might not be in a few days.
We got dropped off at the airport for the first leg of our journey - a flight to Amsterdam.
None of us slept much at all on the plane - but we're excited to be in Amsterdam. We have a 3 hour layover before our flight to Geneva so we enjoyed some coffee and our first "pain au chocolate!"
Greg wants everyone to notice his new "Ribz Pack" that he is sporting, too.
He is excited that both of us will have these packs to carry items we want to easily access while we're hiking - kind of reminiscent of "double packing" when we canoe :-)
Our next leg was a relatively short flight to Geneva. We were hoping to take a shuttle from the airport to the hotel we are staying at the last two nights so that we could drop off a bag with some clean clothes and different shoes to put on after our hike. Turns out you have to reserve the "free shuttle" 24 hours in advance, so after doing some repacking, Kevin and Greg took a taxi to the hotel.
Meanwhile, Kris and I were assigned to watch all our gear. We ended up making some peanut butter and jelly roll ups for "lunch" or 6 am Minneapolis time!
We waited about two hours at the airport after Kevin and Greg got back from dropping our bag. At that point we were getting extremely tired!
Our shuttle bus to Chamonix was another 2 hours but when we arrived, we are very excited to be in this beautiful city. The hotel we are staying at tonight and tomorrow night before we actually start hiking on Wednesday overlooks the center of town and the beautiful mountain river.
We are going to get something to eat and then get a good night's sleep tonight. So happy to be here safe and sound!
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So excited to read about your adventures and to see the photographs. I thought of you a lot yesterday, knowing you were taking off on your trip. Keep the reports coming!
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