Rest Day (from skiing)

We are not in shape for skiing the long slopes of the Alps!  Our legs were still feeling it today, so we decided to make it a rest day and take the gondola up to the Aiguille du Midi, one of the must-see sights in the valley.  Unfortunately, it was storming over on the Italian side, so all of the high peaks were experiencing high winds and bad weather.  It was still kind of cool to see the banner clouds coming off of the high pointy peaks.

We took a rain check on the Aiguille, and instead, we explored Chamonix some more, enjoying the food, bookstores, museums, and sights:

Eglise Sant Michel with Le Brévent's peak in the background.  There is a gondola that goes to the top of that peak, and there's a restaurant up there.  Crazy.

Many of the pharmacies had mannequins with knee braces and all sorts of other injury accessories.

After walking down every street possible, we decided on a whim to take the old Montenvers train up to the Mer de Glace glacier.  The train, an electric rack-and-pinion design, was loud, wooden, and red.  It takes an incredibly steep grade up to the Montenvers station -- about 20 minutes to climb almost 3000 feet.

At the end of the line, there is a train station, a substantial hotel and restaurant (closed for the winter), and an incredible view of the glacier, the Drus, and the Grandes Jorasses.

Nora with the Les Drus

Part of the Mer de Glace area is a steep gondola ride down to the surface of the glacier, where you can experience the Ice Caves.  I thought they were going to be natural caves, but apparently, they dig them out every year, and as the glacier recedes and moves, they dig new ones.  It's kinda strange, as you will see.

The walkway going down to the ice caves.  Part of the reason it's so twisty and strange is they have to add sections as needed as the glacier retreats.  This is also the end of the Vallée Blanche ski tour for most people.

If you look closely, you can see some skiers finishing the 20km Vallée Blanche route.

Entrance to the ice caves

So, the ice cave are super weird.  I'm SURE the Chamonix staff have raves and parties down here.  There are weird dioramas with mannequins and no explanatory text, club lighting, weird art pieces, and Enya playing in the background.  Seeing the clear blue ice was pretty amazing, but all of the theatrics I could've done without.  It was very French.

After heading back to town, we took a jaunt through the Musée Alpin, which was having an exhibit of fabulous historic posters promoting Chamonix, in addition to the normal exhibits regarding the history of alpinism in the area.

A delicious dinner at Le Delice led to the discovery of a fantastic alpine digestif, Génépi.  It sort of tastes like a cross between stone pine liquer, gin, and chamomile!  What could be better.

Appetizers

Tomorrow, it's back to the slopes!

Chamonix-Mont-Blanc

We chose to drive to Chamonix instead of taking the TGV, as we had originally intended.  It was a combination of trying to use the circuitous SNCF websites, and the ticket price, which led us to the less stressful option of driving.  The forecast looked good, so it seemed like we could do the drive without 4WD or chains.  The autoroutes.fr website is really helpful when planning a longer drive like this in France.  It combines all of the different companies that run the toll roads, and will give you an exact cost of tolls, plus a gas cost estimate.  All in all, it was about €44 in tolls, not bad.  Oh, and by the way, if you are planning on doing a drive like this, the toll booths DO NOT take magnetic-strip credit cards, nor do the self-serve gas pumps, many restaurants, stores etc.  France, like most other countries, is making a complete changeover to two-factor authentication for credit cards using a smartcard + PIN system (which has already reduced fraud by 80% here).  One wonders why we don't use it in the states, since Visa and MasterCard developed it.  Plus, a signature seems so antiquated as a way of identifying someone.  It would sure be easier if we had a chip-enabled card -- anyone know of a way to get one in the states?  Anyways, the drive was uneventful, and plopped us in the Chamonix valley about 5 hours later.

Our hotel is basically at the end of the World Cup run in Les Houches -- it's pretty awesome.  Our room is a corner one with a balcony, a view of the entire valley, and our very own donkey alarm:  Across the street is a small farm with some chickens and a donkey, who totally makes classic donkey braying sounds every morning.  Loudly.  It cracks us up every time we hear it.  After breakfast, Nora and I walked literally right across the street, and rented some skis from the local ski shop owner, Serge Cachat, who is a total character.  No waivers, nothing to sign, no contract.  He just adjusted the bindings for our boots, put a fresh coat of wax on the skis, and sent us on our way!

Skiing on our first day was about 90% staring slack-jawed at the crazy vistas and views.  We just don't see this kind of stuff in California.  From the slopes, you can see into Italy and Switzerland and about a dozen other ski areas; all sorts of famous peaks and glaciers -- really impressive.  There was some fresh snow the night before, so we had some excellent conditions; we skied the entire resort, including the Kandahar run a few times.  We found that while the resorts here don't have that many runs, they have LONG runs, and equally long platter lifts (téléskis).  After getting pulled up a few thousand vertical feet with one of these things stuck between your legs, you can really appreciate a nice comfortable chair lift.  We skied into town for a light lunch of crepes, then headed back up the hill until the fog forced us back down -- a great first day on the slopes.

After Mr. Cachat refused to take any money from us ("You pay when you are finished.."), we headed into downtown Chamonix to check it out.  It's difficult to describe Chamonix -- it's sort of a cross between Aspen and Yosemite valley.  It's definitely a "see and be seen" type of town, whether you are sporting a fur coat, an Arc'teryx shell, or your bright red Chamonix mountain guide outfit.  Everyone is strutting their stuff around, including the mountaineers with their ropes, skis, and piolets.  That being said, you get the sense that this is still a genuine mountain town, rich with history which hasn't been completely obliterated by commercial interests.  There are strange juxtapositions, such as the Chanel shop across the street from Snell Sports (the REI of Chamonix), and the McDonald's across the street from the old wooden cabin of the Chamonix chapter of the French Alpine Club.  Speaking of food, there is good food in Chamonix!  We had a fantastic dinner at Alan Peru before returning to Les Houches for the night.

The breakfast spread at our hotel

Chamonix valley and Switzerland in the background

Funny sign.  The run was a the equivalent of an easy black diamond, but the warning was really about the world's longest platter lift (between-the-legs disk tow).  Measured on Google Earth, it was almost 1 1/4 miles!

We kept staring at the view

The same view, but from the valley floor.  Headed back up after lunch

The mountain is covered in small houses and little huts like this. Les Houches has cool little privately-owned restaurants tucked away in the trees.

The Chamonix chapter of the French alpine club

Welcome back.

Here we are, in our eighth year, returning once more to Larchant.

Having finally dialed in the travel arrangements, we arrived relatively early to our gite, without too much jet lag. Our first afternoon consisted primarily of catching up with Willem, Rie and Oscar and relaxing in the gite where our gite-mates had generously provided dinner.

Ingar, regarding the perfect conditions, at Cuisiniere

Our second day the weather forecast looked good in the morning, but rainy from the afternoon on. And as if to prove the worth of the saying, "don't get stuck at Bas Cuvier", where did everyone want to go first?...Bas Cuvier, of course. Luckily, the weather held and we managed to climb all day, with a brief break for rain. Cuvier-Rempart was thick with Americans, but that meant lots of pads and enthusiasm. Kevin and Gregoire dropped by their neighborhood crag to say hello, show us new problems, and share beta with the boys on the frightening T-Rex.

Today, we expected rain, but were treated to sun all day. We delayed our start to let things dry out, but enjoyed some stellar conditions this afternoon--sunny, breezy and 7 degrees C.

Cuisiniere was dry and deserted. I identified all of the necessary beta for the quintessential Fontainebleau classic Excalibur, and Randy used all his fingernails had to give working on Duel. We'll be back for these two.

Randy (note the taped fingertip, soon to have blood seeping from a detached nail)

The shoe wars continue...I love my 5x's here(thanks again, 5.10, for discontinuing all shoes I love)...but Ingar is breaking in his Solutions...

Hopefully we'll have many more posts to come...and not just climbing photos (Dad, I heard your constructive criticism). We're looking forward to another great month in France.