Yesterday: Not As Expected

I knew this was going to be a big day. It's the second biggest climb of the whole 1000 mile route, and the last of the difficult terrain for awhile.  I left this morning at nine and was feeling great. After an hour and a half of a consistent but easy uphill climb, my inner dialog was going something like this.

Me:  "This is supposed to be a hard day but this uphill is a piece of cake."
Me:  "Yeah, right?  I'm almost a quarter through this. Damn I'm good at hills."
Me: "After this camino you ought to climb Mont Blanc."
Me: "Or Kilimanjaro. "
Me: "Yeah, Kilimanjaro. Hey Steve! Look at that rock. It looks like that red marble we were reading about in that tourist office pamphlet. "
Me: "You have a good eye for rocks my man. Let's keep our head down and look for more cool rocks. We'll find a couple of great ones and bring them home. "

I make it a point to find a place to sit down, drink some water and have a snack every hour and a half no matter how good I feel. Sensing it was about that time, I started looking for a good tree stump or something to sit down on. I found a good stump 10 minutes later but realized that I hadn't seen a red & white balise  (way mark) since looking up from rock hunting.

Figuring I couldn't possibly have missed a way mark, I kept going for another 15 minutes before reaching a downhill switchback it had signs and marks for several different trails. But none of them were for mine (the GR653). 

Me: "FUUUUUUCK!"
Me: "YOU ASSHOLE WITH YOUR FUCKING ROCKS!"

Still, how far could it have been?  1.5 km?  After backtracking for 45 minutes I finally found my missed mark.  What a disaster. One and a half of the first two hours had been spent getting lost and backtracking.  It took me three hours to get 4.5km from St. Gervais.

So it occurred to me that all 20of the challenhing km were still in front of me. I did what I could to recover by eating g an avocado, chocolate and an orange but never came back. I went another 8km or so and reached a spot with a huge rough uphill or huge rough downhill but I couldn't see a way mark on either of them. So I went back. If there was anyplace open to stay I would have because I'm not in a hurry. Every place was closed until Murat.

I ran into a forest ranger and somehow got her to understand my predicament. She called me a cab and I had a very enjoyable ride, arriving in Murat around 3:30. It was a beautiful day for a cab ride!