It was supposed to be like the Tour du Mont Blanc, only more so. When the TMB gets too easy, the Haute Route is the logical next choice - higher, longer, awesomer. We even thought some of the stages might be TOO short and leave us with time on our hands. We thought we might get bored.
Instead, we ended up here:
To be sure, if you must spend several days in a hospital, Martigny is a charming place to do it. A mountain hike, though, it is not.
It started in Paris.
Starting in Paris made sense. Will had been studying French over the summer, and we were looking forward to spending a weekend getting over our jet lag by eating at our favorite restaurants and wandering around our favorite city. Paris makes a good gateway city for hikes. (Don't even get me started on Geneva's airport....) Monday, Will would fly home. Chris and I would TGV to Switzerland and start walking.
What happened instead: The Friday we landed, Chris came down with a high, high fever. The next morning, he showed me THIS:
My first thought was, "You've been tick-bit!" My hypothesis - pure fantasy based solely on circumstantial evidence - is that a tick attached itself to his elbow during a walk in the deer-infested Rock Creek Park in DC (there has been an explosion of ticks this year, and no, this was NOT Lyme disease but a bacterial infection most likely caused by Streptococcus). He unwittingly knocked off the body, leaving the head in situ to dispense its foul toxins into deeper layers of skin. Pure conjecture, of course. We will never know for sure.
Chris was sick like to die, hot and shivering, and that THING on his arm. So I did what you do in France when you need medical care: I took him to the pharmacy.
The pharmacist took one look, exclaimed "C'est une infection!!!!", and ran to the phone to call the ambulatory urgent care service. Within the hour, a doctor had arrived at our hotel room, diagnosed cellulitis, and prescribed oral amoxicillin. Shortly thereafter, a phlebotomist arrived to draw blood. Except for the walk across the street to the pharmacy, Chris never had to leave the room.
That weekend, Chris took his meds and rested. Will and I went to see his school and move him out of his dorm. Sunday morning, the swelling had gone down. The three of us even managed a short outing to get our customary Berthillon ice cream.
Chris felt so much better that I went to the Gare de Lyon and bought TGV tickets to Martigny for the next morning. (From a kiosk!) We were set to start the Haute Route.
The full Haute Route runs from Chamonix to Zermatt and takes two weeks of walking. The first three stages are the last three of the TMB in reverse, so we skipped those and had Alpine Exploratory begin our arrangements in Champex. We arrived in Martigny in the early afternoon and paid for a cab to drive us up the hill to Champex instead of taking another train and local bus from Orsières. (About $100. Totally worth it.) At our old favorite Hotel Alpina, Chris got in bed and I went out to walk around the lake.
We hoped a good meal and a good night's sleep would set us up to start hiking the next day.
Champex to Le Châble is a very easy stage, mostly flat and only 13 km, with a couple of potential outs on train lines, making it perfect for a convalescent. It was like walking in the Shire.
The arm, though - the redness was spreading. The Internet said the redness could get worse before it got better. Chris felt strong. He was on antibiotics. He could soak his arm in the town water troughs. He ate well. Surely - he was fine?
Originally, we'd planned to hike from Le Châble up to the Cabane du Mont-Fort to spend the night, after which we'd head into this forbidding landscape. Before we left Paris, I had Alpine Exploratory cancel our two nights of mountain huts and replace them with extra nights in Le Châble and Arolla - spending three days in the high mountains didn't seem smart. Our hotel gave us free passes to the téléphérique, so we spent the day doing the high bits of that day's walk, and then enjoying a leisurely lunch in Verbier, where chanterelles and abricots were in season.
It was a magical day. But when Chris took off his shirt that afternoon, his right arm was red and swollen from short-sleeve-tan-line to his fingertips. Clearly something had to be done. I could barely choke down my food, so eager was I for the night to end so we could seek help.
Up bright and early, shove our stuff in our bags, suck down some coffee and to the train by 8:30. Martigny before 9, and I had a plan: ask the ladies at the Pharmacie de la Gare what to do. They sent us to Vigimed, the urgent care place, where it seemed that Chris would be released with just a change of antibiotics - perhaps doxycycline - when the doctor saw his blood tests. "The news is very bad, my friend," he said, and next thing we knew, we were walking to the hospital.
Within the hour, Chris was on a gurney in the emergency room with IV amoxicillin dripping into his arm. I was on the phone with Alpine Exploratory, getting our bags delivered to the hospital and rearranging our arrangements yet again. I realized with dismay that I'd have to call our health insurance company. But by 2 pm, the guarantee of payment had come through, our bags were at the hospital front desk, and Chris was installed in a double room with big windows and lots of fresh air and natural light.
Just as I thought everything was getting settled, I discovered that there were visiting hours - and they were about to end. I was banished.
But! We must move on. I found myself a seventh-floor single room in the hotel across the street from the hospital - a romantic garret in which to wait out our separation and cry myself to sleep. And though Martigny and the hospital were strange and sad at first, we both got used to our new lives.
Our schedules revolved around Chris' IV drips - 8 a.m., 2 p.m., 8 p.m., 2 a.m. Thursday morning til Monday afternoon, Chris sat in the bed while nurses brought ice packs. The doctors would visit in the morning and make pronouncements - your blood looks better. Maybe you can go today! No, actually, now you have a fever so you can't go.
The fevers came and went. Chris slept. I watched two seasons of The Crown. He watched endless Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. (The hospital wifi was excellent; the summer patient population being fairly geriatric, we were probably the only people using it. I imagine it gets heavy use during ski season.) He could leave the hospital, so we went out to get salads at the Migros food court or pizzas in the town square.
I ate my solitary diners at Steakhouse Martigny. The owner's husband had spent a month in the hospital with an infected arm, so we were kindred spirits. By the last night, I didn't even need to order - they just brought me my usual.
Chris was feverish all day Saturday, but by Sunday, he was feeling good. He spent the day basically as an outpatient, returning to the hospital only for his 2 p.m. drip. We explored the town - starting with Barryland, where there were St. Bernard puppies!
Martigny is lovely, and everyone there was very kind. If we had to stall out for a hospital stay, it was a really nice place to do it.
Monday morning we were nervous nellies. Would Chris have a fever? Would the doctor let him out? SHOULD the doctor let him out?
The doctor let him out. She said he could carry on with oral amoxicillin, though he had to stay for the midday drip. I dashed out to pay the hotel, buy train tickets, and get more Swiss money, and then we were free! We filled his prescriptions at the Pharmacie de la Gare - the pharmacist was surprised by the need to actually charge us - and hopped on a train for the 20-minute ride to Sierre/Siders.
From Sierre, we took a bus up the mountain to Zinal. That was the scariest bit of the trip so far! I had to give Chris the window seat and keep my eyes closed so I wouldn't have to see when the bus drove right off the edge of the mountain. Zinal was all Alps and cool air, a stark contrast to sunny Martigny. We felt like honeymooners!
Miracle of miracles, we were hiking again! Chris had his right arm in a sling, but that just won him the admiration of fellow travelers. Zinal to Hotel Weisshorn is an easy hike. It starts with a climb, but then hugs the side of the mountain range all the way. We moved slowly and took lots of breaks. We were just so happy to be walking!
Hotel Weisshorn is an old-school alpine hotel, reachable only on foot (most people just walk an hour from a cablecar) and with minimal amenities - WCs in the stairwells, bathrooms in the hall. I'm certain it's haunted. But dinner is top-notch, and you can't beat the sunset from the dining room.
The Haute Route is all about going up and over stuff, but dallying in Martigny had kept us off the hardest passes. Today there was no way around it. We had to cross the Meidpass, and high time!
Gruben, also known as Meid, is barely a place. It's just a summer settlement. They close off the valley in the winter because it's avalanche alley. We elected to stay up the road in Oberems, in a hotel instead of a dorm bed at the Hotel Schwarzhorn. We took a "taxi," which was actually the postbus, Oberems not being much more of a place than Gruben. The biggest shock was having to switch from French to German.
This stage was too long for us. We had to start by taking the bus from Oberems to Gruben to begin with, then there was a steep climb to the Augstbordspass. Then a long descent to Jüngen. We had already planned to bail on the remaining walk by taking the cablecar down to St. Niklaus and then the bus back up to Grächen, a nod to our convalescent who tired easily, but we didn't even get to Jüngen until 4, so it was kind of necessary. So much for our fear that the stages would be too short!
The last stage of this walk was downright scary - exposed and super narrow, with a steep drop off to the side. Chris did the whole thing with his mountainside arm immobilized! You see me looking a bit sick with terror in one picture. (Madeleine and Ryan share my feeling about heights.) But we were now into the Mattertal, the valley that ends at the Matterhorn!
The cablecar was a surprise. We expected something like the cablecars in Verbier. Um, no. This one can transport four people approximately every ten minutes. We waited an hour to ride it down (you can pay at the bottom). It was still faster than walking. The residents of Jüngen use this cablecar for their normal transportation - there seems to be no other way up or down.
We had always planned to do the Mattertal valley walk from St. Niklaus to Zermatt, having no desire to do the scary, rock-fallin' Europaweg. I do not love exposure, and Chris does not love rocks falling from above. Since we were starting in Grächen, though, we decided to do the mid-altitude path through Gasenreid. It was pretty and nice until it wasn't, and then we just got on the train. Sometimes that's okay. We were over trying to prove anything to anyone!
When Chris was a kid, he read a book about climbing the Matterhorn. The thing about the Matterhorn, though, is that it is hidden behind all these other huge mountains, mostly that pesky Weisshorn, which seems to be everywhere. But we got to Zermatt, and there it was!
And that was our Haute Route. We made it through, we did some good hiking, we saw the Matterhorn at dawn. Now all that was left was a TGV to Paris (first class, baby - carpe diem!) for the weekend and then home.
We ate at L'Encrier and Le Vaudeville. We shopped at Uniqlo and Comptoir des Cottoniers. We visited another pharmacy, this time in search of anti-itch cream. I just love French pharmacies! And we got out of town just before the temperature hit 95 degrees. It was a good weekend.
Oh, and the arm? Yes. Well, the arm got slowly better. Never has something so hideous been so obsessively photographed and catalogued. It was our morning ritual. If that's not love, what is!
As for the Haute Route - we're glad we did it, or at least our own unique version of it. It was certainly spectacular, in a gray, rocky sort of way. We have to say, we missed the ubiquitous cafés on the TMB, offering apricot tarts and toilets. The Haute Route offers many rocks behind which to pee, though "behind" is a relative term in a 360 degree landscape. With the Haute Route, once you get up to a pass, you are committed for the day - it's either down the other side or back the way you came, and neither one will be fast or offer much in the way of amenities.
We are terribly grateful to Alpine Exploratory for handling all arrangements, the taxi company that brought us our bags, and especially the pharmacists and doctors who helped us along the way. I am very very happy that I learned French long ago! This story could have turned out very differently.
Next year - well, much as we love the Alps, maybe it's time for a change. Coastal Brittany maybe?
Credits:
Amy and Christopher Blackwell