Introduction: La Fouly to Champex
7th day out of the 11 of the TMB. Today, we were thinking for a while if we would take the bus to Champex to skip this part of the trail or walk from La Fouly to Champex as the original TMB stage 7.
After doing it, well, it is nothing that special and most of the trail is in the forest. Only a small portion of it is in a beautiful valley with small villages.
If you want to skip on day this one would be a great choice as it is convenient to take the bus as well.
Table of Contents
Mapping the day: La Fouly to Champex
TMB Stage 7: La Fouly to Champex
Leaving La Fouly
After a nice night in our tent, we woke up around 6am, packed our tent and stuff and headed to the hut to have breakfast. Once ready, our teeth cleaned, we left the camping at 7:20am.
We headed back to town and passed it. La Fouly is really small but kinda cute.
The Valley
At a certain time, the trail went out of the forest and we walked through a couple a small village. This was the best time of the day but unfortunately the shortest as well. Here also the trail goes downhill.
Between 2 villages, we passed by a small hill with a bench, we took the chance to rest there with a great view.
Hill to Champex-Lac
Now start the less enjoyable part of the day, though it is not a crazy uphill, but it is still going up through the forest. We must admit, we were not too fan of forest walk as we got them a lot back home.
Almost at the end, we found a nice bench with a view. So, we had our lunch break there.
We then kept on till Champex. Once we saw the board of the city, we still had to cross all the town to get to the camping. We arrived around 12:15pm there
Champex-Lac
As we had time, once the tent pitched, we headed to the bakery and had a refreshing beer. Soon after, it started raining. It was the beginning of 3 rainy days…
We then popped by the supermarket to buy food for the night and then some bread from the bakery. The bread was amazing, and the supermarket even had tofu.
We did not book any spot, but it was not a problem. We ended up being 5 tents there. It was much less crowded than the day before. Maybe people double up stages cuz of the weather.
The camping is older but still do the job. It was unlimited hot water and clean toilet. Â The common area is open, so it was a bit cold due to the rain but we mostly all ate there and chat with each other. We meet a couple from Scotland doing the Haute Route, 2 German on the TMB and 1 Argentinian/French. It was great.
The cost for 2 people, 1 tent is 35.2CHF (1x tent 16CHF, 8CHF per person, 1.6CHF stay tax per person)
Fenêtre d’Arpette
Originally, we had plan on staying in the Relais d’Arpette which is 50min from Champex-Lac but already a head starts for the Fenêtre d’Arpette, the variant of the next day. Due to the weather, we decided to give it up.
We waited till the end to decide and ask the local tourist information center. But they told us that the Fenêtre is rocky and with the rain it will be slippery. But that is not the problem. Up there it is really foggy, and you can’t see the trail anymore.
In reality, even the next day it was foggy on the stage 8 which goes way lower than the Fenêtre.
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Lao Tzu
