Earlier this summer I was reading Ray Monk's biography of Oppenheimer. At the start of the book, I was surprised by how much I could relate to him—when he was a child, as a young adult, and in his formative years. I found the circumstances of his childhood and upbringing to be uncannily familiar and similar. Then I read the part about how he was struggling emotionally during his post-grad studies but then his mental health was magically healed by hiking in Corsica for 10 days with friends and his ability to dedicate himself to his work/research effectively took off after after that hiking holiday: throughout his life in various interviews he credited those 10 days as changing the trajectory of his life.
Well, when I read this part, I was doing just fine mentally. In fact, I was at a high point in life on a personal level (sadly not a professional one). Anyway, because I was in a very good state of mind when I read this part of his biography, I decided that I must take a similar hiking holiday prophylactically and... yada yada yada within a few weeks of reading that part I hiked the Tour du Mont Blanc.
Well, when I read this part, I was doing just fine mentally. In fact, I was at a high point in life on a personal level (sadly not a professional one). Anyway, because I was in a very good state of mind when I read this part of his biography, I decided that I must take a similar hiking holiday prophylactically and... yada yada yada within a few weeks of reading that part I hiked the Tour du Mont Blanc.
The Tour du Mont Blanc is a ~100 mile hiking loop around Mont Blanc with ~33000 ft of net elevation ascent and descent. The loop goes through France, Switzerland and Italy. It's typically done in 10 days but having just run a 1:32:33 half marathon a few weeks ago, in my delusions of grandeur I figured that I'd only need 4 days to walk this loop. As an extra precaution I added a 5th day just in case if it rains. [Rereading this I can't imagine why I said "extra precaution"... I can't think of any other precaution I had taken, this was really the only one]. And I took exactly 5 days off from work and flew to Europe. Turns out I needed a shorter day on day 3 and on day5 there was a thunderstorm. So I hiked the first ~70 miles (with 23,000 ft of ascent/descent) of the counter-clockwise loop starting from Les Houches in France, walking through the French, Italian and Swiss Alps, and finishing in Champex, Switzerland.
The photos below are some of my favorites from those 4 days of hiking the TMB. I hope to repeat this hike many times in the years and decades ahead.
