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Chamonix Activity Report: 18th July 2008

featured in Activity reviews Author Tom Wilson-North, Updated

The pleasure of walking in the mountains is something that becomes closer to me as I get older. Maybe it's the time of year, when Chamonix town centre becomes unbearably busy; maybe it's the soothing escape that altitude offers from the more stifling heat lower down. Whatever it is, it's got me out and about this week enjoying sensational trail conditions in beautiful weather.

First up was the glorious walk up to the Cascade du Dard, a 40-minute hike from town centre towards the Mont Blanc tunnel. If that sounds too much like hard work, you could consider cheating and driving up, parking just off the last bend before the tunnel payage. And from there, it's only five minutes. If you've ever played a Tomb Raider game, it's really not far off one of Lara Croft's challenges. An immense (20m+) waterfall fringed by wooden bridges and surrounded by immense pine trees takes pride of place, soaking everything for tens of metres with fine, icy spray and rendering conversation all but impossible. It would be a great place to get married if you could hear a word of the service. As it stands, the roaring of water on water is overwhelming, and defies one to do anything but stare in awe at the magnificence of this beautiful feature. As you can tell, I'm quite a fan. Since being in Cham nearly three years, I can't believe I've not been up there before. I advise you to check it out immediately if you haven't yet done so.

Having walked to the Cascade, we decided that a little mountain biking was perhaps in order to stretch our limits as well as our limbs. So it was with that that we decided to check out a new route we'd identified on the IGN map - which, incidentally, is the best one to get for route planning while you're here. Starting off from Chamonix, we drove to Les Houches and then up towards the Merlet animal park. However, instead of turning off at the Merlet, we carried on up to Le Bettey, where we parked up and started the arduous half-hour push-up to the start point of our downhill run. Our route took us down to Servoz on a fast, flowing, traversey, wide singletrack freewheel gem. The as-yet-unnamed run is probably do-able in twenty minutes, but we took over an hour savouring the unusual views over Les Houches and Mont Blanc to our left and down to Servoz to our right. We came out high above Servoz, after which we jumped on the train back to Chamonix (thus getting on before the majority of bikers and staying beneath the max-5 limit). Good times.

This evening we decided to go and investigate another waterfall; this time the Cascade de Blaitière. It's the one you can see and hear (on quiet nights) from pretty much everywhere in town; located above the cemetery and Les Planards. To get to the trailhead we had to walk through the new MGM development - lovely looking apartments, wish I could afford one - and up the side of the valley. Our route ended up being somewhat circular, going up about forty switchbacks and then down another forty back to town. Unfortunately we never quite made it to the Cascade de Blaitière itself...maybe that's a project for my next day off.

Until next time!