Here's where we're going, courtesy of the gps coordinates recorded in photos taken along the way. We began in the lower left in Chamonix and ended up on the lower right, in Zermatt.
The way to Trient was along a road, though not a busy one. About half way there it began to rain and soon after a fellow stopped and insisted on giving us a ride to our hotel.
We spent a night at a hotel in the small town of Trient. It's a typical Swiss town, with groomed greenery and maintained buildings.
We stayed at the Auberge du Mont Blanc, a hotel aside the Trient river.
After a night in Trient and two good meals we're off to Champex Lac.
The weather was grey and getting greyer as we hiked to Champex Lac. Here is Emily with a couple of barely-visible cows in the background.
We stopped for lunch at Alpage de Bovine, a cafe and dairy farm in Martigny. It's said to have beautiful views but this day it was socked in by fog.
We're heading to the right, parallel to the road. Champex shouldn't be much farther.
We stopped for a night in Champex Lac, a Swiss village centered on a lake. It's at about 1,500 m elevation. Two long-distance hikes pass through Champex, the Tour du Mont Blanc and the Haute Route.
So let's get back to our hike to Zermatt. We stayed one night at the Hotel du Glacier in Champex. It's the yellow building in the photo below. We stayed there several years earlier when we hiked the Tour du Mont Blanc.
It was morning in Champex and we were supposed to get to Cabane Louvie by nightfall. Ideally we'd stay somewhere in between but we didn't have the time, we were skipping a stop on the route. But we weren't free of hiking because Louvie is remote, it's up in the mountains with no road access. The nearest town is Fionnay so that was our plan, take a taxi to Fionnay then hike up from there.
