Dinner at 2,985 metres

From Grimentz the trail does one thing: up.

Past the top lift station the crowds stop, and they stay stopped. The path keeps climbing to a plateau with a lake on it, glaciers stacked behind, marmots complaining somewhere ahead. At the Pas de Lona, 2,787 metres, the turquoise Lac de Lona appears below and the last half hour turns serious: chains, wet rock, careful feet. That spur is where the T3 grade comes from, and it ends at the Cabane des Becs de Bosson at 2,985 metres, the highest point on the entire Alpine Passes Trail. Higher than every pass on it.

Almost nobody sleeps up there, which is the whole reason to. Three things we learned in person: pay cash, the card fee is three francs. Do not plan to charge anything at lunch, the sockets only run in the evening. Order the raclette.

Next morning you cross back over the pass into a different valley and a different language, and give away 1,642 metres into the Val d'Hérens: loose rock first, then pasture where Hérens fighting cows graze beside a tiny chapel and a buvette sells alpage cheese, then forest, then the old street of Evolène with glaciers standing over it.

There is a gondola out of Grimentz that removes the first 540 metres. Using it is a reasonable decision and it changes the day from demanding to pleasant. We walked past it, which is a less reasonable decision, and the plateau at the top was worth every metre of it.

Who it suits: walkers who would rather have one big climb than two medium ones, and who want a hut night that is not a formality. Who it does not: anyone who needs a bail-out, because above the gondola there is no lift down, and anyone who needs privacy to sleep, because the hut is bunks.

Twenty-one kilometres sounds modest. The climb is 1,438 metres in one go and the descent gives all of it back.

21 km. 1,475 m of climbing. T3. One night at 2,985 m.