Chamonix and into Italy

At long last, the Benevolent Beasley Bloggers return!  After our two weeks in Paris, we were excited to be off to somewhere else, a place that I have wanted to visit for a long time, Chamonix.  Chamonix is a town in the Alps close to where France, Italy, and Switzerland meet and home to world-famous alpine skiing and mountaineering.  In other words, it is a Brannan-magnet, and beautiful to boot.

After our first bout with being sick and rain on Monday night and Tuesday, Wednesday was the day to make my mountain dreams come true.  There are two main summer attractions in Chamonix, a trip up to Aiguille du Midi (needle of the south), and a trip to the "Mer de Glace" (sea of ice) glacier on a cog-wheel train.

First: Aiguille du Midi.  It is an outpost built on the tip-top of a mountain, that is reached by taking two tram rides.  You start out in the valley of Chamonix at about 3,400 feet, and get off the second tram at just about 12,400 feet, and incredible 9000 ft rise.  This is the world-record holder for vertical ascent in a tram, and it was first put into place over 50 years ago!  So how long to make such a journey?  We figure about 20 minutes, to rise almost 2 miles into the sky.  Yes it is fast, yes it is steep, and yes it was scary.  The scary part was when the tram would roll over the wheels that support the cable, because the car goes from being suspended on a loose wire, to suspended by a solid support, to being on a loose wire in a few seconds, and when it comes off the support, the tram (with approx. 60 people on it) bounces and rocks quite a bit.  And you are several hundred feet in the air.  Gets the ol' heart a pumping, I can tell you that.

We were on the first car up for the day, filled with mountaineers and gear ready to conquer Mt. Blanc (highest mountain in western Europe).  Needless to say, I was jealous.

View from the car - up we go!  The white is glaciers.

Due to the height of the mountains, the sun doesn't actually rise in the valley until 9:00.

The view pulling into the top.  Made it!

Pulling into the station.

Once you arrive on top, there are a series of viewpoints that let you see over the Alps, into the valley, and of Mt. Blanc.  Totally astounding to be at that altitude and to see the mountains so close.

Melanie and the summit platform.  Chilly!  No idea why one of the buildings looks like a missile, maybe to intimidate the Swiss?

Us with Mt Blanc in the background

Us and the alps!

Mt. Blanc visible in the background.  The "Normal" route took them up the glacier in front and along the ridge lines.  The summit is still 3,000 feet higher than we were.

My sweet wife and some sweet altitude.  Life doesn't get any better!

 I will tell you, I've done some mountain climbing in my days, but this was on a whole different level.  All the guys going up with us were intense mountain guys, not kidding around about being tough.  They say that the route to the summit of Mt Blanc is only a two-day route...made me want to give it a whirl.  Alas, sometime in the future, maybe.  First I'd need a lot more technical ice climbing experience and training and have to begin eating flaming railroad spikes while wrestling and wrangling wiggling rabid alligators for fun on the weekends just to be tough enough.

 

Mountaineers exit from the outpost to the glacier.  Wow!

Mountaineers beginning their routes from the summit.  Made me want to grab an ice ax and some crampons.

Left- beginning of the route.  Right -View down onto the glacier from the top.  Can you spot the mountaineers?

Fun in the sun and snow.

Looking down onto the arrival station and into the valley.  That's high!

Not sure why they were there in shorts... it was 34 degrees!

Despite my suggestion, the French decided not to name this formation "The Thumb."  Wha???

So that was neat, and a great experience that I will never forget.  We then set off to WALK INSIDE A GLACIER!!!  I wasn't sure what to expect except that we were going to ride a really old train to see a glacier.  It ended up being Melanie's favorite part of Chamonix.  Check it out:

Us and the Mer de Glace, a huge glacier!  The part that looks like dirt?  It's dirt sitting on the glacier still.  This thing was huge!  Wikipedia puts it at 4.2 miles long and 600 feet deep.

The route down to the glacier.  It was easy enough going down (at altitude) but up was another story.

The entrance to the glacier cave

 On the hike down, you saw various markers that showed the height of the glacier at different years.  It was kind of depressing because the glacier is rapidly shrinking, and even in the last 15 years or so, it has retreated a really long ways.  Politics and science aside, it was sad to see such a natural wonder shrinking and disappearing for whatever reason. 

They rebuild the ice cave every single year, and it has to be extremely well planned because they are tunneling into a glacier that moves 300 ft a year, or 1 cm per hour!  It is essentially a loop inside the glacier, and they put colored lights into it to make it feel more glacier-y.  It was a spectacular experience though somewhat terrifying as a moving, warming glacier makes quite a lot of popping and groaning sounds as it expands and pressure builds and shifts.

Wow!  We're inside a glacier!  Awesome!

Dark?  Yes.  Cold?  Yes.  Awesome?  Yes!

For some reason they carved out rooms and put mannequins in them.

Ta-Da!!!

I had to do it!  Yes it tastes like ice and yes my mother did raise me better than to go around licking random surfaces.  But I'm OK!

The entrance/exit, lit by natural light

Glacier and the Lonely Mountain

A day I will remember for the rest of my life, for sure.

We have since traveled south, to Genoa, Italy, where we holed up waiting until monday when we head to the Cinque Terre.  We'd never heard anything about Genoa, so we weren't too sure what to expect.  It has actually turned out to be a pretty neat town, a big seaport town on the Mediterranean sea, with lots of character and charm, and is very old, just no huge famous sites or museums.  What we've determined is that there is a lot of competition for tourist's time in Italy, so places like this, though neat, are impossible to put in a guidebook for tourists because there is nothing to write besides "walk around and be impressed by old stuff."  It's been a fun find for us though, and the only other tourists we've seen have been Italian.  A fun, delicious weekend though, as this is the birthplace of both Focaccia and Pesto.  Hmmmm..

A cool church we just wandered into.

In this random, impressive church were tombs from, ya know, the 1500's!

They had random old stuff just around town, such as walls and fortifications from the centuries past.  Also colorful pastels on every building.

View of the coast from a 6 euro cruise.  Some good views, although a lot of industrial shipping sightseeing.

Typical old-town street, lots of walking, uphill

Home of Christopher Columbus.  Just stumbled upon it while walking, which means they need a better PR person.

So we're excited, Cinque Terre and Venice are coming up this week, so stay tuned!