Pic de Portabere et Pic de Montaud

Susie is in Chamonix for the next three weeks doing her 200hr yoga teacher training. I m holding the fort, trying to complete the bathroom rebuild and mostly likely doing the hay-making and sheep shearing before going to collect her at the end of the month. The weekend and the first half of the week were spent working on architectural projects then Thursday and Friday I collected and laid the floor tiles in the bathroom and porch - progress at last, plasterboard next!

Saturday, time in the mountains with Sheri, Michiel (returned from the ship) and Ian who hasn't been on walk with us for probably 10 years! Alun and Breezy are back (from the UK) but still in self-isolation, though we waved and had a socially distanced beer with them on our return.

It's hot and humid (June) so we planned a walk up to the Port de Salau (which usually catches the wind). 

Rather than head to the port we veered right to the col between Pic de Portabere and Pic de Montaud before striking up the narrow ridge to land on the summit of Montaud (2496m). The original plan was to descend the ridges over Lane Formente (a reverse of the route Susie and I did with Alun and Breezy last summer), but the clouds were building over Mont Rouch and scraping the summit of our Pic and we decided to descend the same way, continuing this time to include the Port de Salau.

On the descent we met some dutch walkers who had spotted what they thought were deer, a closer look with my telephoto lens revealed that they were in fact Iberian Ibex.

 A cold beer at Alun and Breezy's concluded our walk of 14km and 1400m (4600ft) of height gain.