5 Lessons I Learned Running the 100-Mile Tour de Mont Blanc

We created a whole rating system for our accommodations, spending copious time discussing the humorous aspects of our previous night’s stay. One particular night bonded us for life. We refer to it as “what broke us.”

I won’t name the place because one Italian girl who worked there was very nice. So it’s the end of a long ass day. I mean long: Nine and a half hours of running. We are getting close to our rifugio when the storm starts coming. Temperatures are plummeting as fast as our moods, the wind is whipping across the mountain, and it’s starting to rain. We still have at least a half-mile straight uphill to get there. All I could think about was a hot shower, food and a glass of wine.

We got there and it was jam packed with weary hikers from all over the world, humming with different languages and odd smells—especially in the reeking “shoe room.”

I got in line for the shower, and pieced together enough conversations of the people in front of me to finally understand that there was no hot water. So we took a glacier-cold shower (I stood in the water for two seconds, screaming obscenities just to survive) and dried off with our tiny chamois travel hand towels and pulled on our hut clothes over ice cold damp skin, shivering. We slept 13 people in a bed, in sleep sacks with a thin mattress over wooden planks.

Our rained on, sweaty clothes would never dry if we washed them so we hung them up like stinky sachets on the clothesline across our bunk. Across the room were 15 more strangers sleeping together, snoring and tooting. Jamie was so tired she used a dirty sock as an eye mask. We got the giggles so bad no one could sleep.

The thing is. We did have fun. Later we determined this was the place that broke us, and we had to break down in order to build back up. We will never take a hot bath, a large fluffy towel, a clean pillow, or a good night sleep for granted again. Little luxuries.