Christine in Chamonix, France Take 2

Chamonix, France is wonderful.  It's around 6 or 6 1/2 hours away from Stuttgart, Germany.  You can travel over the mountain pass, save some time, or around Geneva, Switzerland.  On the way, we went over the mountain pass and the return trip took us through Geneva.

Brevent

There was 3 days of sunny weather and on the last day, a storm rolled in.  This trip, I skied Brevent (1st day), Flegere (3rd day), and Grands Montets (2nd and 4th days).  I love skiing in the sun.  It doesn't seem as cold.  Chamonix is nice because it actually has some harder runs, i.e. decent black runs.

I arrived at Flegere at 0900.  If you are a skier, this means first tracks.  These were some of my favorite runs of the trip.  You can fly down groomed slopes.  The snow was so soft, not the crunchy stuff.  You just go and go.  No reason to stop.  Except that others eventually started skiing the slopes.  And then there are no fresh tracks.  Cause everything is skied.  Not that I can actually blame anyone for this.

View from Grands Montets

Skiing on the glacier

Grands Montets has a glacier at the top of the mountain.  You have to take a 2nd gondola to get to the top.  A full of people, like 40 of your closest friends, gondola.  I skied the glacier on the last day.  You know, the day it was snowing and gray out.  So no amazing view pictures.  But I will try to go back for you all.  It's the least I can do.  It is 3275 m (10,700 feet) up to the glacier.  The snow was incredible up there.  Once you got to it.  You had to walk a million steps down from the gondola to the snow.  Or maybe it was 200 steel steps.  It was a lot.  And it's not like you can close your eyes and count backwards from 100, by 7, to pass the time.  You have to walk them all.  The hardest part.  After riding the gondola up.  The powder was over knee deep.  I only fell 3 or maybe 4 times.  The first time about 30 feet from the start of the run.  Not too bad, since I haven't had the opportunity to ski as much in powder.  I stayed on the marked trail.  The guy I was skiing with went out of bounds and seemed happy.  Yeah, he is braver than me.  It's ok though, cause there were other people skiing the glacier and I stayed near them.  It is 1300 m (4265 feet) to the lifts and 2500 m (8202 feet) to the bottom of the mountain, where the bus takes you back to town.  And it is a decent beginner intermediate run to the bottom.  I didn't ski the glacier to bus run all at once, but over the course of the day, I did go from top to bottom.

If you don't go for the skiing, go to France for the food.  And wine.  Well, I would have liked more scallops, delicious sauce, but I enjoyed the mushroom risotto, even if it is peasant food mom.

Christine