TDG 7, day one

 After we left Chamonix, Beat and I spent eleven days in Switzerland visiting his family. From an outdoors perspective it was mostly uneventful. I spent a lot of time working on the finishing details for my next book (photo book still set to be released Oct. 1. Kindle version will be out Nov. 1.) Beat brought home a cold from PTL that I ended up catching, and we're both fighting it still. I tried and mostly failed to get my running legs back with jogs on pleasant forest roads. Beat I and embarked on several jaunts up the "1,000er-Stägli" (which is actually more like 1,111 steps up a hillside near Olten, gaining 850 feet of elevation ... or about 78 stories.)

The goal is to climb the 1,000er-Stägli in twelve minutes or less. This is what you feel like after climbing the 1,000er-Stägli in twelve minutes or less. Then of course you run down the trail to try it again.

On Saturday we arrived in Courmayeur for Beat's seventh running of the Tor des Geants. This is my sixth time attending it with him as occasional support crew (well, technically in 2014 I also ran 200 kilometers of my own partial Tor des Geants.) It's a lot of Tors, really. It actually surprises me a little that Beat still wants to come here and do this, even though these mountains are beautiful and Courmayeur is pretty much the best mountain town in the world. He holds an increasingly rare "Senatori" status — a person who has finished every running of the Tor des Geants. There are now twelve Senatoris left.

The TDG started at 10 a.m. Sunday under sunny skies and temperatures in the high 70s. Pretty much ideal. There's rain in the forecast, but as of now, no significant threat of snow, which is what started the runaway problems that derailed last year's race.

Beat already agreed I didn't need to meet him at the first life base, so I took advantage of a free day to climb the via ferrata (cable assisted climbing) route up the mountain in this photo. Mont Chetif.

It starts out with chain traverses along steep slabs — really, they're steeper than the photo makes them look. This is the easy part of the climb. After this, things started to go badly, and I didn't take many more pictures.

The main issue arose when I went off route, by accident, up a steep gully. The gully was covered in slippery, stinging grass on a 60-percent grade. As I scrambled up the gully I was thinking, "I'm glad I don't have to come down this." I grabbed a tree trunk for leverage and hoisted myself up to a rock scramble, which I'd call class four only because there would be no way to arrest a fall if you slipped off the rocks and landed on the grass. Of course, at the top of the rocks, there was a cliff. No way over or around. Oh, dread. I pulled out my GPS track to confirm that I was indeed off course, but only by about 30 meters. The right way was at the top of the gully, and only way to connect with it was to go all the way back to the bottom.

Dread, dread, dread. I don't tap my adrenaline all that often, but this was a maximum dose with my heart beating at least 190, hands shaking noticeably, and breathing swift and shallow. I down-climbed the rocks as carefully as possible, grabbed the tree to get back to the grassy slope, then tried to crab-walk down the grass. Unfortunately there was just no traction and I started butt-sliding, unintentionally, for several meters that I was convinced were the beginning of the end for me. But then I grabbed a handful of grass that actually held, arresting my slow but terrifying slide. My tights were ripped, my hip was bruised, my hand was cut, my heart was pounding out of my chest, and I was quite upset. But after calming down, I decided that continuing uphill was still better than down-climbing the cables. I resolved to pay more attention.

The rest of the Mont Chetif climb was still really hard, and I was maxed out at a 45-minute-mile, but I was happy to be alive and determined to make it to the top so I could take the easy way down.

Statue on top of the 7,600-foot summit. I could see this statue from the lower part of the mountain, and thought it was a person standing on the edge, looking right at me. "Why is that person still standing there?" I thought several times. I forgot about it after the scary butt slide, so the summit statue remained a surprise.

View of Val Ferret from the top of Mont Chetif.

Descending a steep couloir on the other side.

Once I'd connected with the Tour du Mont Blanc trail, I decided to follow it to the summit of Mont Favre. It seems like it should be a quick add-on, but it turned my little via feratta scramble outing into a 19-mile hike with 6,000 feet of climbing. Ah, still worth it.

Descending via Val Veny, because I'd never been through this valley before. Soon it was starting to get dark ... how did that happen?

As of 11 p.m. Sunday, Beat is moving very well in the TDG. He reached the first life base at 10 p.m., which I believe is nearly three hours faster than last year. I start making the support rounds tomorrow.