I have two days left in the mountains of southeast France. I feel that if I had any goals for my week here, they ought to be attended to today, because tomorrow, the weather pattern in the Alps shifts. Their much needed precipitation will descend on the mountains (though not in a blizzard fashion) and, too, on those huddling in the valleys. So today is it!
What pressure!
I feel like I have not wasted my time here thus far. Indeed, I packed a punch. Perhaps even a wallop. The days were a bit too long and I was too tired at night. Posting was an effort. If you want to tell me that I could, in the future, take a vacation from posting, I'll retort -- how little you know me! Still, each day has been full and long and memorable.
So what to do today? So many competing interests. Teresa, my local walking partner here, noted that one reason why staying in Chamonix (she wasn't born here) appealed to her many decades ago, when she made that decision, was because there is so much variety in the valley. This is true. You come to Chamonix with a book full of options! (Though I have to say, the absence of heavy snows here this year worked in my favor: I would not have been able to do half the walks I did, had there been abundant snow. Too many avalanche threats kick in. Less snow is a skier's loss, but Nina's win.) For a visitor, deciding where to go and what to do is tough. Will I be filled with regrets if I don't do the valley walk? If I don't hop over to the Swiss side of the mountain? And what about a day of not doing much -- that has its charms as well. Should I just do nothing?
I thought about all this as I looked out on the mountains this morning (my usual routine upon waking up).
And I thought about it some more at breakfast.
I thought how yesterday was sportive. Maybe today should be restorative?
(More thinking, in a corner of the hotel's vast living room.)
I thought about how I could always come back next year. But, but, what if there's snow and the mountain trails are cut off for walkers? Would I come here anyway? You cant decide this kind of a trip at the last minute. Too, I love the hotel. I love how it's perfectly acceptable for people to walk around in the white bathrobes and slippers. And how the young staff is always smiling up at you. It's all great. But it has, along with perhaps all of Chamonix, and maybe the entire French Alps... dare I say it -- too many Russians. Here we are, about to commemorate with sadness and not a small amount of fury the start of their war, and the families and the blond trophy wives (fake blondes, every one of them) of the powerful (because who else from Russia has the means to travel right now, with frozen assets and tightened restrictions) are vacationing in the French Alps.
It gets to you.
So here's my day, the earliest part of it preset by segment two of my face rub, scheduled for this morning. So, I start out with a twist of the neck and a squeeze here and a pat there (the goal is to improve circulation) and now I am ready to set out. (With a bag full of creams to take home, because EU creams and cosmetics are heavily regulated whereas ours back home allow for every toxin and carcinogen on the planet to be stuffed inside. You can read about it here. The article explains how you should read the labels and not buy stuff that contains excessive amounts of like a million unpronounceable words -- a ridiculous and impossible to implement suggestion! Easier just to buy those that are made in countries that don't equate regulation with an intrusion on personal freedom.)
After all that thinking, I decide to go back down to Les Houches, this time by train, and to pick up the telecabine from there up to Prarion. I've been told by Teresa, by the Tourist Office, by everyone, that there is great walking/snowshoeing/cross country skiing up there.
I board the train.
I love this line that goes up and down the long Chamonix-Mt Blanc valley. In the late morning it hasn't the skiers and so I settle in to do some serious people watching. Some kids traveling independently, some families, some couples, some older people moving around the valley in this very convenient, calm way.
I get off at a station a demande. Meaning it's small and it's only on request. How small is it? Take a look: there isn't much beyond a platform. No streets leading to it, just a path to follow up the hill.
You have to climb up to get to the main road (through a forest, past a farm smelling deliciously of farm animals)...
... and I note that there's a lot of ice on the path. The way they deal with ice is to sprinkle it with gravel. No salt. At all. Anywhere. Sure, you have to walk carefully. (Or you can just move around by bus and avoid this station altogether.) But it's manageable.
The telecabine is much like the other two little gondolas I used to get up mountains here: about a ten minute ride up about 1000 m (3280ft) above the valley. (To remind you -- the Chamonix-Mt Blanc valley is already 1042m above sea level. Not high, but not low either.)
Once up on the Prarion plateau, I quickly find the itinerarie raquette -- that's what they call a snowshoe trail. Unlike the one I tried yesterday, this one is quite reasonable (and it is shared by some cross country folks, though I saw no more than one on Nordic skis the whole time I was up there). So, it still has its ascents and descents, but it is wide and well groomed. It's really a civilized winter walk on a mountain. Good exercise, splendid views, and pockets of quiet, when you are not crossing the ski runs. (Though the ski runs here are not very crowded. I don't know why. Perhaps they aren's as challenging as some of the others?) And here's the thing: because it's so safe here (you're not going to slip down the mountain and break every bone in your body, like on yesterday's snowshoe trail), and because my cleats on my shoes are so perfect for packed snow, I can not think about managing the difficult terrain and instead, I can focus on the view, the air, and on what's inside my head. Meditative walk indeed!
I do have plenty of photos from it even as I understand you are probably tired of mountain photos. Still, it's a beautiful spot on this planet of ours and I want to give it its due. So, maybe twenty pics, okay? Fine, I agree that's excessive. You probably can do with fewer than ten! Well then here are nine!
(to the valley below)
(undulating terrain of the plateau...)
(well groomed and well marked snowshoe trail!)
(another solitary walker...)
(two on snowshoes: it is not that warm!)
(in winter, this is a skiing mountain; in the summer -- it's a pasture)
(occasionally you come across ski lifts and ski trails)
(a snow-shoer, taking it in...)
(hikers taking a pause: five friends and two dogs)
I stop at the mountaintop restaurant before going down on the telecabine. Just long enough so that I can time my return and catch the 2:51 train back to Chamonix. As usual in these places, the restaurant is mostly self service. There are a ton of chairs that people arrange for themselves on the snow. Even if you are not buying anything, you're free to sit down. Eventually one will open up.
You find it, you plop yourself down, you exhale. And you take a selfie!
A few minutes later I ride down to the Les Houches town, and then walk down some more, to my station a demande.
(icy but manageable)
(station a demande)
The little red train arrives on time and some 15 minutes later I am in Chamonix.
I had been told I must get myself over to the Chalet 4810 Salon du The (so named because that is the height of Mt Blanc). It sits on top of a bakery (Aux Petits Gourmands) which some would argue is just as good if not better than Richards. And, it has a collection of crystals that you can admire. [Crystals in Chamonix are a big deal. Fluorite and twisted quartz are found only on the Mont Blanc massif and in the Polar Urals in Russia. Crystal exploration and trade -- for jewelry, for high end decoration -- was well documented in this valley even back in the 17th century and it became an important part of Geneva's trade at the time. There still are crystal hunters in Chamonix today. They hunt and excavate using only traditional methods. Skills are passed on from one generation to the next. So, a big deal here!]
Yes, just looking at the pastries in the window makes me want to go in.
(inside: a French family where the grandfather did 99% of the talking)
I try to be sensible: how bout starting off with what they call a salade d'hiver? It's a salad composed of beets and lots of endive and walnuts. And for dessert? I'm sorry, I just can't help myself!
And the afternoon sun sets and soon we have a winter evening take hold. Cool and crisp.
I eat dinner at Chez Constant. They pride themselves in their use of French and when possible, local products and I am happy to see that this puts a lot of mushrooms on the menu. Again, I find the fixed price meal to be a real deal. What do I get? Well, I start off with scallops (they are from Normandy; it was either that or their foie gras and two days in a row of foie gras is too much) which are with chanterelles, and then go onto local trout over winter root vegetables and, again, with chanterelles. Dessert is part of the deal and the waiter convinces me that a molten cake with raspberry ice cream is tres petit. It's not. I can't finish it. And no, you do not get a photo of the dessert. I'll post one of the trout because it is so classically French and so perfectly prepared. Underneath that skin is a delicate pink meat that falls off the fork. Sublime.
I'm always surprised to see every menu here have cheese fondue on it, and even more surprised to see so many people ordering it. Boiled potatoes, cut up baguette and a pot of cheese. To be sure, the cheese is probably greatly enhanced with wine, possibly garlic. But it is just melted cheese. No better no worse here at Chez Constant than in most other restaurants in Chamonix. And honestly, it's not really a Savoyard dish. Cheese fondue is properly Swiss. But, images of Alpine foods run deep and I suppose when you vacation in the Alps, you want whatever you feel is that quintessential Alpine food. I'm not totally immune: I often pick up a tomme de Savoie chunk of cheese for breakfast. Me, who never ever eats cheese for breakfast back home.
Sleep well all you mountain lovers and city dwellers and ocean people everywhere!
With love...
