The Road to Mont Blanc: Part 7

That was hard. Day one is done, and it was tougher than I’d thought. My hip flexors started crying early into the ascent, and they’re still crying now.

I've realised steep, long climbs were definitely missing from my training. Oops. 

We ran from Chamonix to Trient, Switzerland, covering 18.6 miles and 6,000ft of ascent, and it was a killer. The Lake District's got nothing on the Alps! 

It's strange, we've done hikes with that much climbing before, but here it's literally up up up, then down. Today we hiked uphill for three-quarters of the day, rewarded with zero views. The weather remained gloomy – misty, cool and damp.

We did decide to take the lower, longer route – and it was a mistake, of course. It meant we had to climb down multiple long, vertical metal ladders, which started as ‘quite fun’, then quickly turned as the drops became more 'one slip and you'd fall to your death into the abyss'. My legs would not stop trembling. 

I couldn’t shake my nerves until we started our final descent into Trient about 7 hours in, and I knew we were safe; that we weren’t going to get stuck on the mountain in heavy snowfall in our shorts and end up on the news, and that there were no more ladders.