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“Hey Dad, look back across the bay. I can still see that boulder island we were hiking on two days ago!” “Yeah, Sitka, you’re right. And now, over there, at that point in the distance, I think that’s where we’re camping Wednesday night.” “What?” pipes in older brother Heron, deftly twirling his hiking pole in his recently un-casted left hand. “It’s really gonna take us three days to walk only to there?” It sure did. For a family accustomed to cycling a hundred kilometres or so a day on our bike tours, we’re used to the landscape changing pretty quickly. Even during our two treks by foot through the Alps this summer, we would always feel like we’d covered a lot of ground over several mountain passes before supper time.  Now, as we backpacked the north coast of France along the Grande Randonnée 34 in Bretagne, tracing the ever-undulating contours of the jagged shoreline with our boots, our daily 15-20km of hiking seemed startlingly sluggish - especially when gazing out over the open Atlantic Ocean and all its hidden bays, nooks and inlets. One day, we turned inland along the Léguer River and walked 18km before emerging back to its mouth, 50 metres across from where we’d left it. Slow progress. But for all the moments we wished we had two wheels to get us farther faster, we also found a different kind of magic that left us in awe of this vast, vibrant region, that we would never have known as well if we weren’t on two feet instead. For starters, we rarely saw road - or paved anything, in fact. Most of our ten-day hike from Saint-Brieuc to Morlaix on the GR34 trail was on the very edge of the continent - along sandy beaches, through village harbours, or high up on rugged cliffs, with dramatic front-row views of obstinate land meeting insistent sea in their eternal, ferocious dance.  The Bretagne coast (Brittany to the Brits across the Channel, and Breizh to the native Bretons, descendants of ancient Celts who still see their language on sign posts) is famously dotted with stunning magmatic statues - pink granite boulders sculpted by the sea in infinite shapes like cumulus clouds, piled dozens of metres high in often impossible stacks.  Some, near charming Perros-Guirec, are accessible and explorable from the beach, with tourists scrambling through and over them for a day’s-worth of stroll. Others are far offshore, like bobbing whale heads in the distance.  The ocean floor here is strikingly shallow - in some bays for a mile or two out to sea - so that the tides reveal incrementally new bits of islands in artistic formations, then hide them slowly away again. At first, this makes for some less inspiring coastal views throughout the day, with dozens of boats marooned in expansive mud flats, like an apocalyptic pre-tsunami movie scene. But a few hours later, the azure water is back in, so clear on a sunny day that you can see the brown peaks of those stone statues barely, momentarily submerged. One must choose one’s swimming breaks carefully, or face a mile-long hike out for a dip. Not like that would have stopped Sitka anyway. Like our mountain treks, the climbs and descents could be steep and strenuous. But with a maximum elevation of 98 metres above sea level, the challenge is only ever five or ten minutes long before reaching payout in splendid views over the next bluff. Exploring by foot rather than bike also affords us more opportunity to talk to our teens. Our foursome is in near-constant conversation on all topics under the bluebird sky: among others the latest happenings on the Tour de France that we’ve been following religiously, plans for this fall (spoiler alert: biking), opinions on Canadian and US politics, and every plot twist of the novels we’re currently devouring (except Ed, whose snail pace has him still reading the same book since June). Hiking has its own challenges, of course. On bike, we pass through many towns - and pass many grocery stores, snack shacks and patisseries - each day, easily detouring off-route if needed. On foot, we could go a couple days without fresh food stops - which would have to be near or directly on the trail - meaning heavier packs and grumpier packers. And being in France, of course, sometimes shops were on a hours-long midday break for sieste , cafes closed on the one day we were happening through, and campgrounds full because, well, summer weekend. These dilemmas were inevitably exacerbated by Ed’s chronic underestimation of each day’s predicted distance (GPS maps are great at measuring road routes - less so with coastal walking paths). At one point he responded to Heron’s innnocent inquiry about the number of kilometres left with an exasperated shoulder-shrug and a defeated shoulder-slump. “I have absolutely no idea.” But we all toughed through the rough bits: Heron is still lugging the majority of the family’s food and gear in his over-heavy pack, sometimes way ahead of the rest of us, seeing it all as training for ski season. Joce is silently enduring a fresh set of foot blisters that remind her with each step and require vigilant care. And Sitka has grown and inch or three this summer, so has joined the family club of hitting our heads on every low-hanging branch and ceiling. He finds this less funny than he did when it was Ed and then Heron. Still, we’re feeling rather spoiled on this route, once voted France’s favourite of all its Grandes Randonnées . We’ve stumbled on more-frequent-than-expected ice cream stands and gluten-free blé noir (buckwheat) galettes stuffed with cheese and other savoury toppings. On several occasions, our campgrounds have hosted galette or pizza food trucks on just the day we arrived. And we’ve had evening tournaments of mini-putt, pétanque and outdoor ping-pong - just as we like it. And we even finished our trek a day early, in Plougasnou, where we indulged Ed’s inner history geek with a boat tour out into the Baie de Morlaix to visit the Chateau de Taureau - a Renaissance-era fortress built by the locals to fend off English pirates, fortified by France’s Sun King Louis XIV and then used as a water-bound prison for embarrassing aristocrats and counter-revolutionaries. True story: you could write to the king about an insolent (adult) child, drunk sibling or creepy uncle, and have them imprisoned on this treacherous island, so long as you paid their costs - we know you’re thinking of just the family member you’d choose right… now. Then we walked (without packs!) to la Plage Trégastel and rented a sea kayak from, essentially, a vending machine, and explored the boulder statues up close in excitingly choppy waves. *(Also spotted: actual vending machines for baguettes and pizza! Ah, Europe.) And to top it off, we happened past a jazz concert in a secluded garden near our campground. It took us a quarter-hour to find the entrance, by which time the band had wrapped up its soothing set. But when they spotted the curious Canadians emerging from the raspberry bushes, they generously resolved  to play one more. The initimate audience were delighted by our appearance as well, clearing four chairs for us to take in the full experience among the lilacs. “A toast to new friendships!” mused the pony-tailed host and his wife. A sweet end to a summer we’d never planned on. Indeed, just the day before, as we sweated up and down the steep cliffs for four hours contouring into Plougasnou, we looked into bay to the northeast and saw the faint outline of that same boulder island Sitka had pointed out on Monday - the one we’d climbed the last Friday afternoon.  It was the following Wednesday.  We pivoted our necks and saw all the glorious coastline we’d seen up close. Every nook and every inlet. Maybe seeing the world on two feet isn’t so bad after all. That said: as we arrived at our final campground, Ed gasped as he realized he forgot to take out the extra cash we would need for the next day’s boat tour. The last ATM we passed was six kilometres back - over an hour on foot each way.  Big problem.  Desperate, he glanced around and spotted, leaning against a camper-trailer… a bicycle. “Maybe I’ll borrow a bike from another camper,” he dreamed out loud while checking in. “I’ll lend you my bike, no problem!” offered the elderly camp host, who led Ed to her musty old barn with an old granny contraption in the back.  Flat tires, cobwebbed spokes, gunked-up chain and rusty brakes - this was still nirvana for a guy who hadn’t pedalled in two months. He pumped up the tires and gave it a whirl, whisking freely with the wind in his hair… Okay, maybe an exaggeration. Ed has no hair. But still, the old clunker did its job, delivering our hero to the ATM and even a grocery store for extra chips and Orangina to celebrate. “You know what solves all problems?” he quizzed Joce with a joyous hug on his return. “A bicycle.” Yes, we thoroughly enjoyed our summer on two feet.  But deep down we’re still a family on two wheels.

Picture yourself lounging on the world’s best sunning rock: moulded perfectly to the curve of your back, with just the right pressure on the sore spots, at the ideal angle for gazing up at the clouds wisping briskly in the blue sky above. Tilt your head left, you see the sky-scraping, scraggy granite peaks that envelop the narrow mountain pass you conquered a half-hour earlier. The nearly-thousand-metre climb began in shady, fragrant conifer-and-fern forest with multiple crossings of rushing mountain streams; then passed by a log-cabin refuge with scrumptious blueberry pie, and later a refreshingly frigid, crystalline alpine lake you leapt into for a break from the mid-July heat; and it ended 2400m above sea level with engrossing, panorama valley views on either side of the rocky saddle. Tilt right: a vast field of enormous, red-hewed sandstone boulders, strewn about by an ancient glacier to form the challenging moraine you’ll have to scramble across when you’re done your rest. Just then, two imposing curled horns appear in your sightline, followed by the stubby snout and long-slit pupils of a bouquetin - the ubiquitous mountain ibex  of France’s Maritime Alps. These muscular, graceful goats mull around with humans like kangaroos in Australia - not especially curious but not afraid either. They mostly seem to be seeking the most mineral-coated stones to lick. “That rock you’re lying on is delightfully salty,” he’s saying with his still glare. “You gonna move on soon or what?”  Reluctantly, you sit up, re-lace your hiking boots and cede your spot. Soon afterward, you’ve crossed the boulder field and are on a tenuous ridge curling around yet another soaring rock face. Then you descend a series of loose-gravel hairpin switchbacks, on a steep grassy slope, dotted with a rainbow of wildflowers, into a verdant farm valley with a constant din of cowbell guiding you to your destination. It’s just one sample day of our family’s exhilarating trek through the Maritime Alps along the Grande Traversée du Mercantour  (GTM) - a gloriously diverse, two-week hiking route in a spectacular parc national  along the France-Italy border north of Nice.  Eleven unforgettable days, not one the same as the others. We’d been wanting to try out one of Europe’s famous hut-to-hut treks since our parental leave in Europe and the South America’s Patagonian Andes, 16 years ago. On a day hike in Argentina with nine-month-old Heron on Joce’s back, we came across a remote alpine hut that served mini-pizzas and lemon meringue pie, and we’ve been craving a return to something similar every summer since. Normally, we’re a family of four on bicycles, but two broken teenage arms thrust hiking onto our summer menu, and we finally realized our longtime dream. But we were admittedly worried about the reality - especially around food. On our first outing this summer, around Europe’s famous Mont Blanc, we learned that two hiking teens consume a lot more food than a single newborn. And Mont Blanc had daily villages and cafes to top up our meal stocks. This time, we were walking into more remote, unknown territory. We knew we could sleep in our tents near the mountain refuges  - we figured we would prefer the fresh air and quiet over packed dorms and snores. But we decided to take the dinners at the remote huts to reduce the amount we packed in - what if their idea of a mountain trekker’s meal wasn’t of the same volume as our boys’? So there we were, in the fruit and vegetable aisle at the Utile supermarket in Isola 2000 - the lone village along the GTM route - unsure which ones to get. If you think it’s a bad idea to shop for groceries on an empty stomach, try it after four days hiking in the Alps with two teens, and another seven more days coming up with no more places to stock up. We bought them all. Well, maybe not all , but certainly far more than we needed, could carry or could eat. Apples, peaches, mango, all types of berries, bananas, peppers, carrots, broccoli, a zucchini and an onion. We also stocked up on enough carbs to fuel a Roman legion: pasta, pizza, bread, chips, tortilla wraps, and several kilograms of chocolate. Plus it was hot, so a couple tubs of ice cream. Three protein bars per day, each, so there’s one full hiking pack right there. Then of course, after our first round of delicious fruit salad, we all felt stuffed. “I think we need a full day off just to eat all this food,” worried 14-year-old Sitka, belly near bursting. “It’s five o’clock and we’re leaving again in the morning, right?” “Don’t look at me - one pizza will be plenty for me,” warned 16-year-old Heron, our new family pack mule and leftover garburator. “We’ll have to carry whatever we don’t eat,” reasoned Ed, who knew the two heads of broccoli were solely for him to eat tonight. “Okay then let’s get started,” ceded Heron, opening up the box of appies. We gorged like grizzlies prepping to hibernate that evening, hoping our fat stores would see us through. Turns out our panicked planning was just right. Each refuge hut ( refugio for the nights on the Italian side) was as different from the next as each day’s hike. Every afternoon we would arrive to a new respite in a unique spot - on an high alpine outcrop, nestled in a glacial moraine, in a valley-side cattle farm, and even at an alpine nunnery where St Anne, patron saint of motherhood, directed a local believer to build a sanctuary a thousand years ago.  Some are smaller and more isolated, bringing in their ingredients once a month by helicopter, or hiking them in on the backs of the guardians (who earn their living on the meals as chef-entrepreneurs, while the alpine societies who built and coordinate the huts get their income from the dorms). Others with easier road access attract larger numbers of hikers on weekend or short-term outings, and so have more access to fresh produce to cook with. All had a little surprise in store: very generous portions, multiple courses, inventive soups, and simple but tasty desserts. We never knew what was coming the next night.  Except we could  rely on great conversation, as each evening we would be assigned a place at a long table with our name on it, and meet new friends and fresh subjects - like French politics, the perilous journey of African migrants in Europe, and why North Americans are crazy for putting our eggs and fruit in the fridge.  The GTM is much less known than the Tour du Mont Blanc - especially in the more remote first half before the stock-up town of Isola 2000 - so meals were more intimate and the trails more peaceful. The daily hikes, challenging and even grueling as they could be at times, made us endlessly grateful that we’d stumbled upon this gem of a summer adventure: we love touring on two wheels because it offers dramatically different views and experiences every day. Now we’ve discovered the same can happen on two feet as well. The 17-stage route normally starts in cozy Entraunes, 120km northwest of Nice at the confluence of the Var and Bourdous rivers. But we only had an 11-day window to catch the Grande Arrivée of the Tour de France on the Mediterranean Sea (and to get Heron’s cast removed on a weekday morning when French doctors are available), so we began with a two-hour bus ride up from Nice, winding through deep canyons to the village of Saint-Étienne-de-Tinée.  From there, we climbed three hours straight up through shady forest to meet the main trail on a stony ledge over steep valley walls, hugging an undulating rock face for another hour, through several blasted tunnels, to our first alpine refuge perched above sublime Lake Rabuons. We pitched our tent on its scrabbly shore and took our first frigid dip of many on this trip - certainly not a swim - to rinse off the sweat of the day. On another day, up to Italy’s Pas de Colle Longue , we climbed into the most splendid, green, vast alpine meadow - how a hiker might picture heaven, with an undulating, pristine stream rushing down the middle, spotted with vibrant larch trees and rainbow splashes of wildflowers, and surrounded on all sides by dramatic limestone cliffs.  Even our one rainy day was memorably cool, over the Baisse de Druos, as we sheltered from a hailstorm in the ruins of a two-storey Italian barracks from World War I, then walked through a barren, misty mountain cirque (huge bowls dug out by ancient glaciers leaving small lakes behind amidst the limestone boulders) along a conspicuous rock road that was laboriously engineered for a hunt-happy Italian king but felt eerily like a scene from a J.R.R. Tolkien novel - with sixteen-year-old Heron our guiding Gandolf and forty-something Ed our bumbling Bilbo Baggins struggling to keep up. Later, on our day up to the Pas du Mont Colomb , we packed away our poles and were grappling up fridge-sized boulders with both hands all morning, then trudged through snow fields with crampons up to the sky-high saddle,   only to reach the tiny wedge of the pass and stare seemingly straight down into the abyss-like moraine below.  It was labeled a “technical” descent in the guidebook, which in our home the Yukon has two meanings: to parents, it means “treacherous, use extreme caution.”  To teenagers, “technical” translates roughly into “awesome!” It was both. “We’re not trying to rush you,” explained Heron. “Yeah it’s just that you’re kind of slow,” followed Sitka. And then, with nerves frayed and (Ed’s)  ankles gnarled at the valley bottom, we climbed back up beside a 20m-high dam to the expansive Lac de la Foux, surrounded 300 degrees around by steep slopes and towering waterfalls. We dropped our bags (but refrained from setting up our tents - in France, the rules of bivouac  say no pitching until 7pm) in a postcard alpine meadow, bathed in a waterfall pool, and read the afternoon away under the supervision of a couple dozen chamois  - the ibex’s slightly smaller, more curious cousins. As we approached our tour’s end in Sospel, we thought we’d seen it all along this strikingly varied route - until we reached La Vallée des Merveilles , where ten-foot iron poles marked spots on the rock where our prehistoric ancestors engraved images of ibex, faces and village scenes using some of the first human tools - like neolithic emojis. And the next day, we marveled over a series of ruined old forts from the days of Napoleon in Authion - including an intact summit lookout at the Pointe des trois communes that was the scene of World War II’s last liberating battles. Sure, we’re keen to get back on our bikes soon, since Heron’s cast was successfully removed the day we arrived back in Nice, and Sitka has been eagerly performing his wrist rehab for a week now. But now we’ve tried the hut-to-hut approach to exploring places inaccessible to cycling. And it’s got the same “new awesome every day” feel. And yeah, our packs (on our backs instead of our racks) were very heavy at first, as we carried a week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, snacks, and emergency freeze-dried meals from home (but no broccoli) in the remote wilderness of the Alps. But every day, they got lighter. And every day, we dreamed up new places we could do this: Corsica, Slovenia, the Italian Dolomites (Sitka’s next target with more intense Via ferratas ). We’re kind of hooked on the hut-to-hut. Especially if there’s a perfect, salty rock to rest on.

For two solid hours, we’d been climbing up steep, rocky switchbacks to reach le Col Ferret  - a 2500-metre-high alpine saddle separating Italy and Switzerland. Across the far-below valley we’d just left behind was the southeast facade of iconic Mont Blanc , “King of the Alps”: a miles-wide massif of jagged granite soaring into snowy peaks, with ten immense glaciers each carving beds for dozens of magical waterfalls plunging into the valley below.  It’s as epic a mountainscape as you can get on this splendid planet without a sherpa and severe altitude sickness. For this, the ten-day Tour du Mont Blanc - 170km circumnavigating the King, from Chamonix, France, to Courmayeur, Italy and back via a corner  of Switzerland - is Europe’s most famous and popular backpacking trek. Some 20,000 hikers a year, from around the world, spend six to twelve months plotting out each stage and sleep spot. We’d just decided on it last week - after two broken teenaged arms forced our family of four off of a Baltic bike tour and into Plan B. And so, on this second morning with old hiking boots and overly heavy packs, our feet were still sore and our legs still wobbly from yesterday’s 20km initiation up and along the precipitous ridge above le Val Ferret  with the front-row view. But our spirits were as high as our elevation. “This place is spectacular,” marvelled 14-year-old Sitka. “Yeah, I can’t believe we’re here seeing this,” added big brother Heron. We were feeling pretty fortunate that our hastily improvised detour took us to such an idyllic new route. And then we reached the top. The trail led necessarily away from Mont Blanc for a short spell through some alpine Swiss valleys, and the only way downward was through steep funnels of snow. Sure, we saw our fellow hikers giddily gliding down the toboggan mountain on their butts. But our next glance was at our two sons’ left arms - or more precisely at the two casts protecting them. “Don’t worry, Mom,” reassured 16-year-old, six-foot-one Heron, whose pack was heaviest of all. “We got this.” “Yeah, it actually looks like fun !” chirped Sitka. “Okay, I won’t slide down. I’ll just walk.” Falling on broken arms at this stage would be devastating, no less in the middle of alpine nowhere. But in the end, parenting teenagers means trusting them to know their limits. And after so many trials and challenges on our bike adventures together, our teens had proven themselves many times over. Just then, a French guide climbed up from the opposite direction with a dozen exhausted snow-climbers in tow. “Oh it’s fine if you put your crampons under your boots.” Crampons would have been a good idea, we thought. Add that to the list for next time, when we’ve had more than a week to prepare.  Instead, we kept on improvising. Ed embarked down the slippery descent with his 40-pound pack, digging in his heels with each step to make a path for his boys, who followed with empty shoulders so they could keep their balance down the Dad-trodden trail using their lone hiking pole. Joce followed after to keep an eye on her herd, then Ed climbed back up to shuttle the boys’ bags on his back. “Just one at a time, love!” shouted Joce as Ed gamely tried lugging 60 pounds downhill. “All good, I can do it!” claimed Ed, milliseconds before wiping out, almost riding the butt-slide face-first all the way down the valley, then bringing the bags down one at a time. It wouldn’t be the last time we had to adapt during our ten-day trek, but we did borrow crampons from a fellow family of Canadians we met en route, just to be safe. The Tour du Mont Blanc, or TMB, is the very definition of earned awesome: sublime hiking trails through verdant spruce-and-maple forests, and across alpine steppes with regular, dramatic views of mountain and valley - but only after damn difficult physical exertion. Sure, there are bus shuttles, baggage services, fancy (and crazy pricey) refuge meals and beds, and even gondola short-cuts that feel an awful lot like cheating when you’re (like us) slogging up slopes with freeze-dried meals and full-on camping gear.  But we didn’t meet anyone having it easy on the relentless climbs or knee-punishing descents - whether they were obvious newbies with little daypacks and a lot of huffing sounds, sturdy veterans with larger loads like ours, spry retirees who were actually the most composed of all, or even the hyper-fit jerks who were running - yes, running  - the route with water vests and folding poles.  Everyone was earning their awesome at their own level of fitness.  And also at their own comfort level: one look up at the dangling Brévent gondola in Chamonix, rocking precariously back and forth in the ferocious wind against the grey-sky backdrop, convinced us to take the long way up. “Why would anyone want to go up in that?! ” mused Joce, loud enough for everyone around us to hear. A few couples looked up and started consulting amongst themselves. And, it must be said, at their own level of financial means. We’d heard that the TMB is not for the faint of heart or the light of wallet - but what we discovered was that the two factors are inversely proportionate: pay more, carry less. But at least there exists the opposite proposition. For the legions of tent-campers with whom we shared a field each night - too adventurous, stubborn, or unwealthy (or, in our case, all three plus late-to-the-planning) to have reserved more comfy accommodation - you can suffer for your savings.  And as we can attest, the awesome is all the more sweet. There were treats to be had à la carte , of course. You come across the odd village almost every day for ice cream, fries, pizza or fresh fruit. We supplemented our camp meals with groceries most days, and bookended our trek with much more affordable indoor nights. You can also ramp up the suffering by carrying all your own food and wild-camping ( bivouac en français ), though the rules differ by country as to whether, when and where you can surreptitiously pitch (in France only from sunset to sunrise, in Italy only above 2500m, and in Switzerland only above the tree line). No matter how you roll around Mont Blanc, though, the routine is the same: each morning, hours of seemingly endless climb averaging almost 1000m of elevation gain a day; lunch at the top with a splendid view that makes it all very well worth it; and all afternoon back down again - with alternating moments of pure awe and reflection as to why exactly you’re doing this, again? Indeed, there’s a certain communal feel to the whole experience. As we would pass the same groups at each one’s staggered snack stop, and then get passed by each of them again at ours, we made new friends young and old, in English, Spanish and French, from across Europe, North America and Asia.  Each with their own story, all walking the same path.  Surely everyone else had the same nasty foot blisters, achy knees and bruised shoulders as the older two of us, right? And then, in our case at least, there’s a day that stretches your physical limits, your emotional sanity, and your family cohesion. On Day Eight (having started counter-clockwise in Courmayeur rather than the traditional Chamonix), we started climbing toward Col du Bonhomme  in a teeming rain that abated every half-hour or so before mocking us anew a while later. By early afternoon we reached the summit, soaked and surrounded by heavy grey. Past the crest, again, a vast field of snow along the mile-plus-long ridge. Thanks to our new friends la famille Fontaine , we had crampons. But they didn’t have anything for hail.  Exhausted from the long, bouldery climb, we grumbled along - the kind of hike where your feet keep moving unconsiciously, because if you thought too much about your situation, you’d stop. And if you stopped, you’d likely not start again. The constant, pea-sized ice pellets actually had us chuckling for our misery. Then the sky lit up for a split second. And seconds later, a long, roaring clap of thunder.  Really? Several more flashes of lightning seemed to be getting closer as we trudged through slushy snow and goopy mud amongst the granite slabs in the angry storm. There were other groups of hikers in front and behind us - could we have all lost our grasp of basic survival instincts at the same time? Just as each of us were ready to throw something off the cliff to our right (okay, probably just Ed), Joce caught sight of the day’s awesome. “Woah, look at that over there!” What in the heck could possibly be… woah… Several miles off in the distance was the edge of the vicious storm cloud. And a thousand metres downward was a sparkling alpine lake perched above a sun-drenched valley. It looked like a portal to another dimension. We hadn’t seen blue sky all day - and we still couldn’t - but someone somewhere was dry and happy. There was hope for us after all. Soon we came across a refuge and changed into dry clothes over four tiny, expensive mugs of hot chocolate. The rain stopped, then started up harder again. On the interminable walk down, Ed slid out twice after warning his one-armed sons to be careful, caking his bottom half thoroughly in fresh, thick mud and probably some cow poop. We arrived at the tent-filled field in the tiny village of Les Chapieux, surrounded on all sides by spruce-covered mountains and a glimpse of mighty Mont Blanc up the valley, just in time for the rain to subside. We splurged on some Wood-fired pizza and also dined on rehydrated pad thai. Ed improvised a laundering of his shorts in the creek, and we all hung our wet clothes on our hiking poles to dry, until the rain came again a few minutes later. It was that kind of day. But hey, if you want the awesome, you’ve gotta earn it. Ten days on the Tour du Mont Blanc weren’t necessarily on our family bucket list, but fortune stepped in and guided us to a spectacularly challenging, fulfilling quest. Through lush forest and alpine snow fields, across raging glacier streams and over a dozen alpine passes (and back down again), we refined our resilience and made more memories.   The towering aiguilles  of the King of the Alps - seen from all possible angles - were surely the star. But the little Italian and Swiss and French hamlets and valleys and farms and people make for a superb supporting cast. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime mountaineering experience that’s accessible to most anyone with the will to suffer for it - however much suffering one can take.  If you’ve got a year to plan for it, we’d suggest you get started. And if you don’t, at least remember your crampons.