Day 11: Weather or Not
Food and Beverage of the Day
Pastries
Kir
Practicalities
City: Chamonix
Weather: Early Morning Snow on Mt
Cloudy, Chilly
Hotel: Gourmets et Italy
Sights: Aiguille du Midi
Mer de Glace
We'll Have to Come Back
It was little disappointing not to get a view of the Alps from Aiguille du Midi. We will have to come back sometime and stay a little longer to hopefully get some better weather. I think we will also have to go back to Lauterbrunnen, as I really wanted to hike there.
It’s funny because I imagined this tour as being about seeing great views of the Alps from the tops of mountains and doing quite a few hikes, a break from our normal Europe routine, but it wasn’t. In fact it was exactly our usual European routine of historic sights and great food and drink with the occasional natural wonder thrown in. No complaints on that score here, and I’m enjoying thinking about going back to Chamonix and Switzerland. As you may have noticed if you stuck with this narrative the whole way I’m always looking for excuses to come back.
But if you are thinking of doing this tour, and you think it might be your only chance to see the Alps, then you should think about staying longer and going back to some of the places on the tour, or at least give yourself a little extra time in Chamonix before you fly out. Some of the other members of our group went back and spent more time in Switzerland, and I think they all got some better weather. The people who stayed in Chamonix an extra day definitely did; I saw some beautiful photos from Aiguille du Midi from the day the tour ended.
This morning we rise and attempt to check the Aiguille du Midi web cam. It's down. We head down to breakfast and find that one of our fellow tour members has already been up to the ticket booth, and it has snowed on the mountain overnight. The lift is not running yet, but it is scheduled to open at 8 am. At 8 we are waiting in line for tickets and find that the opening has been delayed until 8:30. The ticket sellers are reluctant to sell us tickets. There is no visibility up there, and we should come back tomorrow when the forecast is better. We explain that we are leaving tomorrow and really do want the tickets. We buy day passes and plan to do the Mer de Glace too. The first car up the mountain fills, and we catch the second at 8:45.
Ready to go up
As promised there is no view at the top, but there is fresh snow, and we scramble around looking at it.
Aiguille du Midi looks like an ice palace in the snow, and it's quite an experience to be up there even without a view. But there seems no point in going over to Helbronner in this weather, so we queue for the lift down.
I had hoped to hike to the Mer de Glace from the halfway point, but conditions seem too hazardous for that, so we go back to Chamonix and take the train. As the train climbs up to the glacier a beautiful rainbow appears over the valley (see above). At the train station we catch a gondola down in the direction of the receding glacier, and then we climb down quite a few stairs for a view of the ice tunnel.
We do the walk through the ice tunnel, which is fun but not extensive. It is worth the stairs, though, if you're wondering.
Day pass
Retracing our steps we return to Chamonix about 1 and have lunch downtown. We do some exploring and make a pilgrimage to a patisserie for fresh pastries.
Next we return to the train station and find the best route to the hotel as we will be leaving on the train in the morning. As we do the walk to the hotel we encounter and greet a cat. The cat then decides to cross the street in front of an oncoming truck to my horror. I'm positive I'm about to see a crushed cat, but both the cat and the truck driver know their business. It's a crosswalk, and European drivers stop for pedestrians, apparently even when they are feline pedestrians!
A new friend
This is our last evening on the tour, so we meet the group for one last happy hour, and the drink of the evening is kir -- so good. The star of the gathering is the hotel dog.
And we cap the evening with an attempt at a group selfie with Rick.
Silly group photo by Trish Feaster
Rainbow from the train to the Mer de Glace