About us
Chris (49) and Amy (47): we have lived in South Carolina since we got married back in 1996. We don’t climb fast, but we can keep going for hours. We dislike camping so much that we once walked the Art Loeb trail in one 18-hour shot just so we wouldn’t have to sleep out. We hiked the north part of the TMB in 2016 (8 stages, Courmayeur to Les Houches) and liked it so much we came back to do the whole thing in 2017.
Here are the essentials:
- Outfitter: Alpine Exploratory. We got the self-guided TMB comfy mix (more hotels, fewer dorms) with luggage transfer.
- Shoes: Altra Superior (Amy) and Altra Lone Peak (Chris). Altra are our perennial trekking go-to – wide toe boxes, completely flat, light weight, no ankle or arch “support.” Zero foot pain and excellent balance over all terrains.) Amy used compression sleeves to prevent calf and shin pain.
- Packs: Osprey Skarab 24 (Amy), Deuter Act Trail 30 (Chris)
- Cameras: iPhone 6s (Amy), Fuji Fuji XE-2 with Fuji XF 18mm f2 and Fuji XF 35mm f1.4 (Chris)
- Raingear: Marmot PreCip jackets and pants. It rains a lot in the Alps!
What we didn’t carry:
- Much of anything. A light pack and light shoes make for happy hiking!
- Trekking poles. They use up energy and they prevent us from using our hands to scramble. I’d be more sympathetic to claims that they help with hiking if 99% of trekkers on the TMB didn’t appear to have zero notion of why they are carrying the things.
- Painkillers. We figure if our gear hurts us, we need different gear. Muscle soreness goes away with time.
- Food. Seriously, we didn’t carry food with us. We have found that a low-carb high-fat (LCHF) diet with intermittent fasting works very well for performance and weight maintenance. We ate a small, high-fat breakfast (in Italian refuges Amy would eat buttered cheese) to minimize morning insulin spikes (we wanted our fat stores to be readily accessible) and then walked for five or six hours, stopping once for coffee. Around 2 we’d have lunch at a refuge or restaurant, followed by as much as we wanted for dinner. Strict low-carb or paleo is very difficult to do in these circumstances, especially in mountain refuges, and fasting from dinner til lunch impractical, so we were flexible. We felt great and had plenty of steady energy for walking - way better than when we used to constantly fuel up with sweet snacks.