16 miles and 2,400′ of climbing today.  Trip totals are:  112 miles walked and 14,400′ climbed.

Last night, we stayed at a very charming B&B, Le Pas de l’Ane (donkey step), which was beautiful, had a great breakfast, but no dinner.  If you had a car, there are restaurants 5 or so miles away … but we are on foot and just walked 15 miles.

So, knowing that we needed our own food, we carried freeze-dried backpacking food! Sounds questionable, eh?  It actually turned out well, with Diane adding some arugola for flair and both of us adding some excellent French bread. Here are the photos:

Today’s hike was beautiful, here’s a sample:

And, a beautiful Sunday morning “cross” cloud.

Now, on to today’s topic: Ascent, Grade and Surface. When we look at how far we want to walk, we try to keep the day’s climbing under 2,000′. Sometimes it’s easy, Sometimes not so much! In our planning, we figured that today’s stage would be 2,000′, +/-. We didn’t figure that last night’s stay was about 0.75 miles off our trail, and 200′ drop in elevation. Those numbers had to be “undone” to even start today’s stage.

And once again, today’s stop was 0.5 miles of the trail and … 200′ of additional climbing.  Oh well.

Now, not all ascent is the same.  From Yenne to St Genix, we climbed 2,000′ very gradually, making it hardly noticeable.

Other times, like today, we had a 600′ section that went “straight up”, then went “straight down”. Here’s the Strava elevation profile of the stage.  You can see the spike I’m talking about, below:

That kind of “ascent” can hurt!

Now, Surface:  if the ground is firm and smooth, it’s a whole lot easier to walk up (or down) than if it’s slippery. The worst is slippery and rocky, where the stones just roll under your feet as you try to step down. The last decent was slippery and rocky:

The grade was > 25%! It was tough!  We traveled about  1 mile/ hr on that stretch.

All for now. Laundry and dining await!