Champ du Feu - Col de Ste Marie
Effective km: 27, total km: 35
Elevation: up 750m + 100m from campsite, down 1000m + 350m to campsite
Min altitude 591m, max altitude 1090m
Active hours: 10h18m
Steps: 60871

I think it was a good thing I was camped next to the people I met yesterday, as they had forgotten their matches but could borrow my stove for its piezo ignition. Disbelief about how light my tent is (around 850 grams) led to lifting it with cries of 'Wahnsinn!', after which we said goodbye (again) and I left. I got to the route at 8.50, my first day on the GR531. I wanted to skip a part of the GR5 as it went off to Barr, Ribeauvillé and a bunch of Alsace villages in between. Pretty, but I'm here for the mountains and villages of the Vosges, I've seen plenty of vineyards in Luxembourg, so I'll take a different route. At Champ de Feu the GR5 met the GR531, so I took the 531 from here. This one is marked with a blue rectangle (the GR5 has a red rectangle here), and it occurred to me how much more difficult this must be if you're colourblind.
The first stretch was mostly down, until a restaurant where I refilled my water bottles. Which later turned out to be a good thing.
Forests, fields, a place with a bee villa (l'll add a picture), and then I did something unusual and took an extended morning break. I found a tick, then decided to check my tattoos extra because ticks won't stand out so much there, and then thought about how much harder it must be to do a proper tick check if you have dark skin.
This day was one of conflicting desires: I wanted to take it easy as I still had a bit of a headache, and I wanted to get as far as possible because I wanted a campsite and a shower and would need new supplies soon.
Turns out I'm not good at guessing distances from my map. I had picked a point halfway between Champ du Feu and Col de Ste Marie, I point I would have to reach today - I thought it would take me a day and a half or two days to walk the whole stretch - but I reached that point by 14.00. By then, it was hot and sunny and I had dunked both feet into water with soft mud below while I was trying to cross something that had once been a forest road. It had deep (more than 50 cm) wheel tracks of some heavy machine, which were in places full of water and in other places full of a mud that looked much more solid than it was. The effect was that I lost my balance while trying to jump over a spot full of water and stepped into water-and-mud with both feet. I rinsed them as much as I could and thought I'd clean them at the next stream or source. But I never encountered one. So the mud dried and for the rest of the day my shoes had a reddish cast baked into them.
I took a lunch break at that 14.00 place, which was also the department border into the Vosges department and had a little wooden hut that provided shade. By then, sitting in full sunshine was a bad idea. So, I thought I could make it all the way to Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines if I got stubborn or ambitious enough, or else camp somewhere in between.
After that point there was a lot of going up and down, and I kept waiting for a water source. But I never found one. I had to ration my water and got very thirsty. And I had to go on, because camping without water just isn't an option. In the end it got pretty uncomfortable, but not yet problematic. Though climbing hills in the moderate heat while very thirsty wasn't exactly pleasant. I did really like the landscape though.
I didn't encounter any water sources and I would just have to get to Sainte-Marie and the campsite (which is quite a distance from the route). At last, at the Col de Sainte Marie, there were people picnicking and I asked if they had water for me. They almost said no because the bottles had been in the car all day and were very warm, but at that point I would have drunk it scalding hot, I was so thirsty.
That liter got me to the campsite, which was another 6km of walking down (350m), though I took a wrong route and added another kilometer. I finally arrived at the campsite just past 21.00, after 10 hours of active walking, tired and glad tomorrow will be a rest day. I was glad to buy ice cream (by this point a magnum feels like proper food) to augment my dinner, because I was hungry. But: it was a day with no rain, only a bit of asphalt, beautiful views. So apart from the lack of water, it was a really good day.

Geschreven door Jewaontheroad