The refuge had a resident mouse that had been rustling around all night. I had hung my food and it was obviously protesting the situation. At one point I turned on my head lamp and shined it right at it, but it didn’t seem phased at all, just kept on licking it’s little paws. I left around 9am because I didn’t get up that early, and not far from the refuge I was surprised to meet two women hiking in the opposite direction; two Americans who were obviously avid hikers. One had done the AT and the other had done the AT multiple times and was piecing together the ECT. They must have left their refuge super early in order to have already almost made it to mine. We said our goodbyes after chatting for a few minutes and I continued on to the next refuge, le Carouge. The trail to get there went over Mont de Loupes, which is over 1000m, but it wasn’t too difficult compared to previous day’s climb and then it was downhill to the hut. It’s in a lovely spot next to a lake. I stopped for lunch even though it was a little on the early side. I went down to the water and ended up scaring a family of ducks away. After relaxing for a while, it was time to continue on.

The trail skirted around a Mountain so didn’t offer any real views and wasn’t too challenging.

I was still somehow feeling tired and glad to get into camp early at just after 3 pm. The site had 4 tent platforms and is near a lake. There was another camper, whose name escapes me, who was doing a section of the SIA and had just started from a nearby hut where a shuttle had dropped him off. He said he wanted to hike the entire trail, but his partner wasn’t on-board for him leaving her behind with their kiddos for the entire summer. We chatted a bit and also found a spot to do a bear hang, which wasn’t ideal but worked. I didn’t want to hang my food bag in the toilet since when I did this two years ago, the mice had gotten to it. So the hang was more for mice protection than real concern about bears and IMO it was ok that it wasn’t perfect. I went down to the lake and did some trail laundry since it was early, windy and sunny enough that I thought my clothes would have some chance of drying. I wasn’t quite feeling up to a dip though, it was chilly next to the windy lake.