Chamonix Holiday Pics
Tuesday, March 10th, 2009Last week we were in Chamonix skiing at the Vallee Blanche ski areas. The snow conditions were excellent, but the visibility could have been better on some days.
Chamonix itself is a nice little town, with much more to do than we’d expected. We also took a trip on the Aiguille du Midi cable car to the peak platform at 12600ft. It took a while to acclimatise to the altitude, but it was an awesome experience, and it was -17 Degrees Celcius but in direct sunlight you wouldn’t know it.
During the days with the low cloud base we went to Les Planards ski area which is at the town level and only 5 minutes from our apartment – we had great fun on the blue and red runs there. On the better days our skiing skills had improved sufficiently to allow us to explore much more of the areas.
The mountain rescue helicopters were operating almost continually during the time we were there, and that has to be some of the most challenging peacetime heli flying possible, especially considering the Alouette III is single engined and operating at high altitudes.
The only regret would be the access pass we had also allowed unlimited skiing at Courmayeur in Italy, but the free shuttle bus through the Mont Blanc tunnel was fully booked days in advance. Next time we’ll go for an extra week!
The new Canon Powershot A590 IS worked well too!