Our first hike in the Alps | France Van Life

We are taking on our second biggest hike that we've done so far on this trip. We're here in Chamonix, near the base of Mont Blanc. Although we're not going to actually hike Mont Blanc, we are going to go up and hike Lac Blanc. There's a lake up there. It says it takes about five and a half hours, five and a half hours to seven. I don't really know any more technical. How much elevation? About 12 kilometers. It's give highs of minus four up there and we're the only people doing it at the moment. There's no other cars. Do you like my French look? I thought I'd best do it now we're in the Alps. Now that we're in the Alps. Awful. That's the path we're taking. 1461 meters we're at at the minute. Lac Blanc is at 2352 and then that's the chalet that you can stay in. Best get a walk on mate. We've already seen some wildlife. Yeah we've literally been walking for like five minutes. I thought it was a deer but it looks kind of like a deer. Why I'm whispering? Because he's already stared me out. This is amazing. What the hell? Wow. I can't believe we're here. The fact that we're here in our little van is pretty amazing. This has just creeped up on us while we've been at this view. Oh my god I'm gonna cry again. I think it's an ibex. Wow look at his horns. No way. That was one of the moments you just can't believe are happening. Martha's got loads of photos so you'll have to go on our Instagram to see them. But that was insane he was just stood here and literally looked like he was partying with his head up and his horns out. Unbelievable. And we were contemplating not doing this because of the clouds this morning. Wow. I just like when people say like with what we're doing then I would say oh it still doesn't feel real. It's like a pinch of a moment now like it still doesn't feel real. Yeah. Like a year ago we were just in the house like doing the normal day-to-day. I couldn't even tell you what we were doing and then now we've just seen that. As we're looking towards Mont Blanc in the French Alps. Shall we see if we can see many more good views? Yeah let's go. We've just seen our first sign of snow up above there. Mitch just noticed it. Wow the last dandelion of the season. My god this is not gonna get old. I look so funny in this but guys I can't believe it. It's actually snowing. It's got really cold now but it's snowing and uh if anyone's wondering what I'm wearing it's Mitchell's extra snood but it's more of a a uv one for the sun but it's the best we had. But it's snowing. It's snowing. The snow is getting very deep. We just saw three blokes walk past us who said that they've just been up to the lake and they said it's quite dangerous getting up there because how thick the snow's got now. So we'll eye it all when we get there but I don't really fancy coming all this way and not getting up there. But they've made some tracks that we might be able to follow to not get too cold and wet. Yeah. It doesn't really feel like Christmas at all. Yeah Merry Christmas everyone. This is our Christmas. Oh my god it's so thick. Put your foot in the thick part there just to show how thick it is. Oh my god. I don't think I've been in snow like this in my life. No. Oh yeah there's the refuge. You can see it. Wow. Oh my god you can see them climbing up there look. Oh my god everyone's got like hiking poles and crampons and stuff. Go on. We're not coming all this way not to get up. I am a little bit concerned. We'll be fine. It's more like once you're wet it's minus hard up here now. Yeah but we're gonna be racing down, racing down. Okay. We'll be fine. We'll be fine. Trust me. Trust me. Trust me. The snow is getting so so thick. Everyone we keep going past keeps saying oh my god you're doing it in trainers. So we'll find out if that was a big mistake soon. I'm not too bad at the minute. I'll tell you what I need to get fitter again. Nearly there now. Oh that was hard work. I'm sure it's going to be thick if the sign is the snow. I know. This is a lot of snow. Wow. We made it though mate. Yeah. Well done. Wow that shows how thick it is. That's on the bridge. Well this is it. Black Blanc. But up here there's the refuge. Unfortunately the snow's coming down pretty hard right now so the visibility is no bueno. But I can't believe we're here. This is what we expected for up here though wasn't it? Yeah. Not this much snow like but. No but we expected not to be able to see a lot. It's very bright. I know I wish I'd brought my sunglasses. I never expected there to be this much snow though. No and I don't know if we said but even one person said to us on the way up that there is not isn't normally this much snow at this time of year and yeah it's coming down pretty heavy right now but we made it. Yeah I'm so glad we went up to the lake as well. I think it just completes it but I think this way down is going to be harder than coming up so probably won't be able to get much of that on the camera. Yeah it's really hard because I'm standing into one of the like foot holes and it's up to like the bottom of my jacket so I'm really having to like lift my legs out. It's very very tough on the legs. Yeah it's energy sapping. It's starting to get pretty cold up here now. I don't know if we're gonna make it down. It wasn't as bad as we thought. We've got down from over there now to just make the trek. Pretty much out of the snow now. We did it. We're down. I think we made good time too. I think it's took six hours. Yeah so with the stopping getting the drone out. Drone and stuff. I'm really happy with that and I've had so much fun. That walk was one of the top things that I've enjoyed in my life. Yeah. Like one of the top moments. Yeah honestly I'm lost for words. I'm so glad that we've done it. Yeah that was brilliant. Now we'll get a coffee. Yeah. It looks like we're in Switzerland then. We have just dropped down through the border and the views already that we're getting are absolutely insane. We haven't even been in Switzerland five minutes and already my jaw has been dropped. Oh man I can't believe we're doing that. Straight into Switzerland and to a McDonald's. We pulled up into the first city that we drove into to try and get some wi-fi because we're really running low on data on our sim cards but it doesn't make sense for us to buy a new sim card until we get to Croatia now. We were trying upload the video for this Sunday at the McDonald's one but it's too slow. It's way too slow. Yeah it says two hours to 22 minutes left and we can't wait that long and also we don't want to spend anything either. So we've just been deciding what to do. We just tried this supermarket here as well just to see how much Swiss sims are but I believe that they won't work necessarily outside of Switzerland and we don't even know how long we're going to be here for. It's not going to be that long so basically we've just been trying to figure out what we're going to do because we don't want to spend too much money but the plan is to head into Interlaken tomorrow but now we're just deciding on what spot to go to. Probably going to do another about an hour of driving. We've made it to our spot for the night. There's running water there. We're literally in the trees. No one else around. Five pits. We wish we had some wood. You having a bath? Oh man that would be cold. It's catching up on me now. Yeah. I'm ready for some food and chill out. We have made it to Lauterbrunnen here in Switzerland and we've come to a park up that we're hopefully going to spend the night at. When I say our view is crazy. There's another waterfall. There's another waterfall. There's another one here. It's a pretty overcast day again today. The weather's not been too great and there's another waterfall there as well as another one here. We're just counting them all. The fondue at that one's 19 per person. So we may or may not have been looking at some fondue. Does someone want to treat me and Martha to fondue for our one year anniversary? Seven year anniversary because Martha's too tight to pay for it. Yeah it's our anniversary today. It's a pretty cool spot to be spending it but to try and do anything that treats ourselves, we're in like the worst place for it. Being in Switzerland. It's a lot of money for cheese isn't it? 19 quid each. Yeah it is. Well this is our anniversary meal. Cheesy bean pasta and I just said to Mitch this time last year we went to a spa near us called Modestral Oaks at home and we ended up having this really nice like platter for starter. We had a bottle of wine. It was a full three course meal and this year we're in the van because it's raining having cheesy bean pasta. What more could you want? Yeah but we're in Switzerland. It's still an anniversary to remember. Oh this is delicious. What are you doing now Mitch? Trying to make pancakes but I can never judge the thickness properly. And then I think we're gonna watch Narnia in bed because the hike yesterday gave me Narnia vibes when we were up in the snow so it's made me want to watch the film. So we're hopefully going to try and master these pancakes and then watch that which sounds like a pretty ideal night for me. For toppings we've got whatever we could find in the cupboard. Just crushed up a few biscoff biscuits. We've got some probably out of date salted caramel dessert sauce, a jar of peanut butter, some golden syrup. Look at that. Pancakes, pancakes, pancakes, pancakes. Look at them bad boys. Happy anniversary. Happy anniversary darling. I think that's where we'll leave you for this video. We're just gonna have this and watch Narnia in bed but we will be filming the rest of the road trip series down to Croatia so make sure to look out for our next video. But give us a like if you did enjoy and we'll see you in the next one. See you in the next one. Look at the state of that. Oh my god it looks like brown souls.