Weekend in Chamonix

Skiing isn’t like basketball, football or soccer; it’s completely dependent on one thing: weather. Mediocre mountains become spectacular with a foot of fresh snow and the best resorts in the world become pedestrian if Mother Nature isn’t cooperating. New England skiers are all too familiar with this concept, as annual January thaws cripple the Northeast ski industry. Sometimes it’s rain or sleet, wind or ice. Other times the visibility is simply too poor to make confident turns. That’s what happened for the first two days of Drew’s and my (I never know how to properly say that) three-day trip to Chamonix, France. Then came Saturday. We’ll get there.

Wednesday I left class a bit early to make my 4:30 flight (a bit more conventional than driving to the Alps, like last week) to Geneva, Switzerland. I took the metro then the bus to the airport. It took about an hour and a half to get from Templova to Praha-Ruzne International Airport. For once in my life (as many of you know), my flights were actually on time. Unfortunately, this was the one time that I could have afforded to be significantly late, because Drew’s plane from Barcelona landed four hours after mine. It was fine, though. I had a nice Swiss meal, practiced some French and watched “Step Brothers” on my laptop in the meantime. I’m used to waiting in airports.

(Quick aside: I took French for seven years, and this weekend was the first time it was actually useful. Honestly, it was really rewarding. Now I can imagine what taking Spanish in say, Framingham is like.

Also, note to Switzerland: Ditch the whole eastside, German thing. French is much more pleasant to be around. Needless to say, Geneva is much more tolerable language-wise than Interlaken.)

Drew landed just after 10:00; we met our driver and by just after midnight, we checked into Mercure Chamonix les Bossons Hotel. (Perhaps I’m just unlucky in the States? Maybe it’s not about luck.) It was raining during the entire drive, which meant snow in the mountains and us, in turn, chomping at the bit.

Our hotel wasn’t exactly in Chamonix Centre. We had to walk about 10 minutes to the nearest bus stop which took us there. Easy enough. We quickly rented skis, boots and poles for only 30 euros a day. Great deal, considering we got top-of-the-line skis. It was snowing pretty steadily so we were psyched. We hopped on the bus to Les Grands Montets (Chamonix is the name of the village – which is very Aspen-like; there’s no peak named Chamonix). We soon realized what we were getting ourselves into. These mountains were extremely steep and wooded for about the first 1,000 meters, which for the most part, is unskiable. Then you hit the tree line. And above tree line + snowstorm = complete whiteout. At times, you could only see two chairs in front of you. We wanted to challenge ourselves and find some fun (I refuse to use “gnarley”) lines, but it was simply impossible. Trails are staked only with bamboo in the Alps; they rarely rope things off. So had we ventured outside the stakes, we theoretically could have found an 80-foot cliff – which would have been the case in Interlaken. We later found out that that wasn’t true at Chamonix, but at the time, we obviously couldn’t take any life-threatening chances.

We found a couple trails where we used trees for depth perception. The snow was great, about 8 fresh inches; you just couldn’t tell the difference between up and down, left and right. It was frustrating and exhausting. Thursday night we were asleep before 10:00. Dinnerless.

Day 2 was much of the same. We tried Le Tour instead of Les Grands Montets, but the results were very similar. Again we were above the tree line in a whiteout. There were some periods of (very) brief sun (being in back-to-back whiteouts, and being in Prague, for that matter, will really make you appreciate that big, fiery star of ours), which was nice, but for the most part, we were picking our way through visual pea soup with fluff underneath. Again, a bit frustrating, but we found our spots in the trees, made some tracks and had a fun, productive day. The highlights of the day were the meals, ordering deux croque monsieurs for lunch and great pizzas and desserts in the village for dinner. The French certainly know how to eat. Our waiter talked to most Americans (or Brits, and there were many) in English, but respected my French enough to talk to me in le francais. I guess that’s what you get for seven long years. Again: exhausted, out cold. Then came Saturday.

Saturday was one of the top six (very arbitrary number) coolest days of my life. The sun was out and there was about a foot of fresh snow. We went back to Les Grand Montets and it looked like a completely different world, and it was an entirely different experience. We had no idea what the previous whiteouts were hiding. The views were incredible and the skiing options were unlimited. It was like Vail’s back bowls times four. So much vertical and more vast than either of us could have imagined. The Alps really do put the Rockies to shame if (and that’s a big “if”) you get favorable weather and snow. Neither is close to a guarantee, but if you get both, like we did, you’re in for a treat. Saturday made are weekend and probably made my semester.

Somehow our 6:00 shuttle to Geneva was a half hour late, so when we strolled into the hotel at 6:35, it was still there waiting for us. Actually, the driver was trying to call me, but my phone was shut off inside. So we hopped in the shuttle, ski clothes still on, and went to Geneva Airport’s Holiday Inn. Drew had a 7:00 a.m. flight to Barcelona; I had a 10:00 flight to Zurich, then a 12:45 to Prague.

So my Alps adventure comes to an end. Six ski days in nine total days. Not bad. But the traveling is far from over. Off to Dublin on Thursday for a Framingham/Madison/DU reunion. Should be eventful.

Until then, enjoy the pictures.