Did all excursions in this 12-month period need to begin with some type of mini-disaster (food poisoning, horrible weather)? #35 was no exception. My plan was to travel to Kinshasa for the standard two-week trip, then return via France to spend 5-6 days with Julie Hernandez in Chamonix. Since hiking was one of the main reasons for the trip, it meant lugging a backpack full of hiking gear – boots, helmet, trekking poles, two parkas, shirts, hiking pants, headlamp, hiking snacks – with me to the DRC. In addition to my usual roller board and briefcase, I was checking in three suitcases: a huge canvas bag with plastic medical dummies, another big bag with computers and other material for our Kinshasa office, and a third with some items that Bill needed to get to Kinshasa. I was traveling with Thomas LaVeist, Dean of the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, who was joining us for the first five days in Kinshasa. Showing no shame, I roped him into checking in yet another bag. In short, we’d be arriving in Kinshasa – after joining up with Julie in Paris – with one heck of a lot of suitcases.
To complicate matters, I was traveling with a valid visa in an expired passport and anticipated problems at immigration in Kinshasa. Our Kinshasa office staff had made some previous arrangements to facilitate my entry into the country (think $50 tip), and I sailed through the formalities with minimum hassle. We were all in a celebratory mode as we piled a luggage cart sky high with our many bags. With so much luggage already, I didn’t realize that my gray backpack was not with the other luggage. We jubilantly exited baggage claim, congratulating ourselves to be the first ones out of the door. It took me 24 hours to notice the absence of my backpack and another 3 days before I seriously started to track it down; the Dean’s program took precedence. Five days after the flight, after much sleuthing to figure out what the number might have been on the tag, our office staff confirmed that miraculously the bag was still at the Kinshasa airport. And with a mere $20 bribe, they managed to get it out . How long would it have taken me to find and replace all the items it contained that I’d need for climbing in Chamonix? And at what cost? I considered myself one lucky camper.
Julie had her own issues. After the Dean had departed and Bill Bertrand had arrived, we came down to breakfast one morning to find a very distraught Julie. She had passed a sleepless night with worrisome heart palpitations that would not stop. Bill found a listing on the U.S. Embassy website for a local cardiologist, and Julie reluctantly visited him for an examination and set of tests the very same day (total cost: $65) The results failed to identify the underlying cause, which was both positive and negative. On one hand, there was nothing obviously wrong; on the other, why was she still experiencing these symptoms? Julie pushed through the work week, despite persisting palpitations and a recurring sensation of something squeezing her heart every twenty minutes. She faced this setback with her usual approach to life: why would she let this small inconvenience keep her from climbing Mont Blanc?
From Kinshasa, we arrived in France and made our way by train to Chamonix. Julie had rented a small house in Les Pélerins with a spectacular view of Mont Blanc from the back porch. It was a 10-minute walk from downtown Chamonix and steps away from all of life’s necessities: a supermarket, boulangerie, pharmacy, and ATM. She had rented the same place the previous year for a month and returned this year for two months. The seven-hour time difference with New Orleans suited her extracurricular program perfectly. She could “play” (hike, rock climb, run) in the mountains from early morning to 3 pm, return home to shower, and be ready for the start of the workday in New Orleans. Having admired her setup the previous year, I was lucky enough to be joining her for a week of it this year.
Chamonix is a town wedged between the massif (range of several peaks) of Mont Blanc on one side and the massifs of Brévent and les Aiguilles Rouges on the other. A tourist destination for generations, its pedestrian-only streets are lined with restaurants, ice cream stands, and shops offering everything from souvenirs to outdoor sports equipment. Although the summer season was not yet in full swing, throngs of people milled carefree through the streets. Those walking with determination tended to have a backpack and trekking poles.
The key activity of the week would be the climb up Mont Blanc, a 4810 m mountain that Julie had climbed at age 17 but wanted to attempt again. I’d asked Julie, “will there be snow when we climb Mont Blanc?” Her reply, “Jane, where do you think the “Blanc” comes from?”
With an extra day before the main attraction, Julie suggested we take a warm-up hike. As I readily agreed, Julie pointed to the highest peak on the horizon to the north side of Chamonix. That would be our destination.
Early the next day we headed out on foot, passed the train station, and began a steady hike upward through the woods overlooking Chamonix. After a couple of hours, we emerged above the tree line and stopped for a welcome break, munching our snacks as we watched the colorful paragliders take off and drift effortlessly across the skies well above Chamonix.
After another hour on foot, we reached our destination: the cable car station at the summit of Le Brévent. Julie said we could be very smug for having walked to the top, while most of the fellow tourists had come up on the cable car. From the snack bar, she ordered a blueberry crepe (which she had been craving since before our arrival in France), while I had my crepe with ham and gruyere cheese.
The scenery was breathtaking. Mont Blanc and neighboring mountains towered over Chamonix on the ridge opposite us.
Resigned to the obligatory picture taking that goes along with a Jane Bertrand excursion, Julie begrudgingly agreed to take her place on the ledge with Mont Blanc in the background. Note to self: next time do not wear a white t-shirt when being photographed in front of Mont Blanc.
By now we were into Hour 4 of this hike, and we began our descent through alternating stretches of rock/scree and fields of slushy snow that still clung to the mountainside. (Two weeks later the snow would be gone.) By hour 5, I was beginning to fade. Showing some mercy, Julie revealed that we were near a cable car station that would shave two hours off our trip down. (That decision was not hard to make.) The cable car deposited us in Chamonix, where we still had an hour of shopping for items we’d need for the big climb.
We returned to Julie’s place to prepare for our departure the next day to Mont Blanc. Dinner each evening consisted of French wine, fresh bread, cheese, fruit, charcuterie, and other hors d-oeuvres consumed against the backdrop of Mont Blanc. Before we could sit down to dinner, we had the obligatory 30 minutes of catching up on email. I got quite a lot of mileage in my emails to colleagues and family that Julie’s idea of a warm-up was a seven-hour hike.
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