Chamonix Activity Report: 22nd May 2008
Had fun climbing mountains or riding bikes this week? We have! Whilst the weather's not exactly been excellent over the last seven days, it's certainly been changeable. This means that the Chamonix Look, forgotten for the winter, has come back around.
The Chamonix Look? We've all been there; gloriously sunny as you get up, so you put on a t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops. You add sunglasses. You check the online weather forecast and realise there's a chance of showers later, so on your way out you grab a Gore jacket. As you step outside, it's actually a bit chilly, so you run back in and pick up a beanie. And there you are, beach from the feet up, mid-winter from the waist. The Chamonix look.
Rather more substantial attire was order of the day for our first mid-mountain foray of the summer, earlier this week. Tired of the lowlands and gagging for some activity at altitude, we decided to take the last cog rail train of the day up to Montenvers, and walk back. The descent from Plan D'Aiguille - the midstation of the Midi lift - had been tabled as an option, but we could still see a lot of snow up there through the binoculars, so we decided on Montenvers.
I brought an ice axe and crampons just in case, figuring that after an excellent snow year it was better safe than sorry. And how glad I was. For the first 600m of singletrack, we were walking over snowfields, simply relying on our memory of the path, and a vague bootpack from previous explorers, to get ourselves back down. Picking up the trail from just below the hotel, we took the Caillet derivative, via the (closed) chalet of the same name, and it was quite an adventure. At one point we abandoned the saturated, deep, consolidated yet slippery snow on the track to take a safer, less exposed, alternative. Half an hour later, we found ourselves squeezing our way between a metal avalanche barrier and a 9-ft snowpack left over from the winter avalanche runouts. It felt more like caving than hiking! Fortunately it got us down to the safer route (which involved, believe it or not, walking on top of a concrete paravalanche above the train track). The feeling of using our knowledge and gear to get ourselves safely through some hairy terrain was exceptional - although I think I'll leave it a couple of weeks for the snow to melt until heading back up there to take the Les Mottets way down.
The track spat us out at the top of Les Planards, where we had a nose around the adventure park. There are lots of ziplines, rope ladders and slacklines, suspended in the forest above the chairlift, which look as much fun for adults as children. That's something we're definitely going to do this summer.
The second walk of the week was slightly cheaty as it was train-assisted. We took the 19:17 train from Chamonix up to Argentiere, and walked back along the Petit Balcon Sud.
Now, as a mountain biker, I'd never walked this track before, preferring to fly down it as quick as my Stumpjumper can carry me, but this time I was on foot and I advise you to do the same sometime. You see a lot more of the surroundings as a hiker; in fact we took time out to explore the 'Plaques Bellin', a climbing wall just set back from the main Petit Balcon down a turn-off I had never even noticed before! There, we found a huge beginner / intermediate level bolted rock face, at the top of which was sitting a herd of ten or so ibex. I'd never seen them down so low, and we took it slow and got really close to them. I wish I'd had my camera handy.
On the way back to Chamonix we noticed the lack of litter on the trails - so refreshing to see the tracks in such great shape. It was hard to believe that we were on the principal Sunday walking route of the summer - get out there and do it while it's quiet.
Until next week!
