Chamonix and Saas Fee When we booked the flight to Geneva several months ago we had originally intended to visit Zermatt. However, the ash cloud issue earlier in the year meant we had to cancel our planned trip to Vancouver Island and we ended up making an unexpected trip to Zermatt instead.Consequently we needed somewhere else to go that was readily accessible from Geneva. I’d been wanting to visit Chamonix for a while (although Judith’s been skiing there), so that seemed like a good choice.We were still keen to include a Swiss aspect to the holiday though, so decided to spend the second half of the week in Saas Fee, which is in the next valley over to the east of Zermatt.
Flying Saturday - We had a nice, “free” Business Class flight from Heathrow Terminal 5 to Geneva. I say "free" because although we didn't pay for the tickets, we had to spend an enormous amount on Judith's Amex card to get them. Anyway, it was a nice flight. It was cloudy over southern England and the Channel, but cleared over France and there were fabulous views of Lake Geneva and the Alps as we came in to land.
Mont Blanc We picked up our hire car at the airport and headed for Chamonix, which is a little over an hour's drive to the south-east of Geneva. This was our first view of Mont Blanc, from a service area on the motorway.
Hotel L'Oustalet A short while later we arrived at our hotel in Chamonix - the L'Oustalet. It's a small hotel - only about 16 rooms I think - but it came highly recommended on Trip Advisor.
Aiguille du Midi As it was still only mid-afternoon, we decided to get stuck straight in and headed for the Aiguille du Midi cablecar, which was only a couple of minutes walk from the hotel.
Chamonix We got our first panoramic view of Chamonix from the cablecar.
Plan de l'Aiguille The cablecar took us to the Plan du l'Aiguille (2,317m - 7,601 feet), where we switched to another cablecar for the journey up to the Aiguille du Midi.
Aiguille du Midi In this photo you can just about follow the line of the cablecar cables to the Aiguille du Midi at the top.
Aiguille du Midi This is a zoomed-in view of the Aiguille du Midi from the Plan du l'Aiguille.
Aiguille du Midi And this was the view from the Aiguille du Midi, at 3,842m (12,604 feet), looking down on Chamonix some 2,800m (9,186 feet) below.
Aiguille du Midi Fabulous view.
Mentalists These blokes were just leaving Aiguille du Midi to go for a walk somewhere. They look well prepared though.
Alternate View Alternate view of the same photo.
More Mentalists Perhaps they were trying to catch up with the other group of mentalists in the bottom right of this photo. No idea where they were heading either.
Camping These camping enthusiasts had put their tents up out on the snow.
Camping In this zoomed-out shot, you can see just where the camping enthusiasts have put their tents (that's my big, red arrow, pointing them out - it wasn't painted on the snow). There doesn't appear to be much shelter from the elements there. Still, I'm sure they knew what they were doing.BTW, Mont Blanc is the dome-shaped "peak" on the right. It might be high, but it's not very impressive to look at compared to the likes of the Matterhorn.
Paragliders Back down at Plan du l'Aiguille, we stopped off to watch some of the paragliders take to the skies. This area seemed to be very, very popular with these guys (and girls presumably). There were generally several or more visible in the sky at all times of the day.
Beer Back in Chamonix, Judith was so parched from her sightseeing that she felt compelled to order the second largest beer available.
Beer I opted for some of the local brew, which really hit the spot. And when I say "the spot" I mean my wallet because this bottle of local beer set me back over £6. Be warned, Chamonix is a lovely place, but if you're visiting, bring lots and lots and lots of cash.
Plan de l'Aiguille Sunday - We were up early (well early-ish), the weather was fantastic and we were back on the cablecar to Plan du l'Aiguille (2,317m - 7,601 feet), where we started our first walk of the holiday. It was a relatively flat walk along the side of the valley, from Plan du l'Aiguille to the hotel at Montenvers, a distance of around three miles. The guide book listed this walk as a "classic" and a "must do". And it appeared that everyone in Chamonix had read the same guide book as I had because most of them seemed to be out doing this walk.
View Still, the views were magnificent.
Striding Judith strode off into the distance as I stopped to take a photo.
Rocky Considering this trail was graded as "easy", parts of the trail were, shall we say, non-trivial. Not too much of a challenge for "regular" walkers, but being a "must do", this trail had attracted a lot of old and relatively infirm people who looked like walking two hundred yards across a car park would be relatively challenging. However, I didn't see anyone rescued by air ambulance or similar, so I guess everyone must have been doing okay.
View Another nice view.
Montenvers After a couple of hours we finally got our first view of the Montenvers Hotel. We were looking forward to a nice lunch there, but the hotel's restaurant was closed for a private function. Tsk.Montenvers is at 1,913m (6,276 feet), so we'd had a gentle 400m-or-so (about 1,300 feet) of decent here from Plan du l'Aiguille.
Mer de Glace Montenvers overlooks the Mer de Glace glacier, which can be seen here snaking away into the mountains.
Cablecar A cablecar takes people down to the glacier...
Ice Cave ...where some industrious types had carved an ice cave into the side of the glacier. Apparently they have to re-carve it every year because, obviously, the glacier keeps moving. We didn't go into the ice cave because we've been in several ice caves before and they're a) very cold, and b) a bit boring.
Train One of the reasons this trail is so popular is because when you arrive at Montenvers, there's this nice train to take you the remaining 900m (3,000 feet) back down to Chamonix.
Walking However, it was our first day and we were feeling keen, so we decided to walk back down instead. Unfortunately we hadn't accounted for the fact that our enthusiasm for walking was in much better shape than our soft and flabby office-bound legs that would have to actually do the walking. We would pay for this the following morning with a couple of blisters and very sore legs.
Chamonix A couple of hours later, we reached the edge of Chamonix.
Flowers We passed this nice arrangement of flowers on a bridge on the way back to the hotel.
Cloudy Monday - We were up bright and early again. With aching thighs and calves I hobbled to the window and, oh no, the clouds had descended. This was a photo from our balcony of the Aiguille du Midi cablecar about to disappear into the clouds.We checked the weather forecast at breakfast and it said that there was cloud only to 2,200m, so if we got high enough we should make it back into the sunshine. We decided to get the cablecar up the other side of the valley to Planpraz.
Oops! On the cablecar to Planpraz we passed over this unfortunate wehicle that appeared to have tumbled from one of the mountain trails.
Planpraz Being at only 2,000m (6,560 feet), it was still pretty cloudy at Planpraz. So we decided to get another cablecar from Planpraz up to Le Brevent, which is as high as you can go on this side of the valley.
Le Brevent Even at 2,525m (8,284 feet) it was still pretty cloudy. We came out of the clouds as the other cablecar descended into them. There were tantalising glimpses of the views below.
Le Brevent On a clear day, the views from this restaurant would be totally awesome. Today they were just fairly awesome.
View The conditions change incredibly quickly up there and a couple of minutes later we got a fabulous view to the west.
Aiguille du Midi Across the valley, we got glimpses of the Aiguille du Midi between the clouds.As I'd been up and about for a while, the pain in my thighs was subsiding a bit. So I decided that it might be a great idea to walk the trifling 525m (1,722 feet) back down to Planpraz. According to the sign, it's only a 70 minute stroll. Judith didn't share my enthusiasm and decides to get the cablecar back down and arranged to meet me in the restaurant near the cablecar station.
Marmot There were a few marmots about and I managed to creep close enough to this one to get a reasonably good shot (certainly much better than any previous marmot-based photo I've managed).The walk was otherwise uneventful and I met Judith in the restaurant. My legs were still feeling pretty sore, but it was still only early afternoon and I didn't feel like hanging up my boots for the day just yet. So I decided to do another "classic" walk along this side of the valley to the cablecar station at La Flegere, which was a gentle, net 100m (328 feet) descent.
View The weather had improved significantly and the views along this side of the valley were now excellent.
Another Marmot I managed to sneak up on another marmot.
Le Brevent Looking back I could see the cablecar from Planpraz (on the left) to Le Brevent (in the upper right), which was where I started out from. It looked quite a long way off considering I had been there only about 90 minutes earlier.
Yikes! The path was a bit nerve-wracking in places. Fortunately some kindly council worker had put up this bit of flimsy orange net to prevent me plumetting from the narrow path to my death hundreds of feet below.
Couloir As the trail passed across a hundred yards of rock slide, a sign warned people not to loiter on the rock slide. I can't imagine why anyone would want to, but I guess there's always going to be someone that thinks the huge, flat rocks would make a great place to have a picnic.
La Flegere I arrived at La Flegere after about 90 minutes. This really had been a "classic" walk and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone visiting the area.Despite the fact that I'd only had a net 100m (328 feet) descent, the trail had been a bit up and down and my legs were definitely looking forward to a rest. However, the views had been fantastic and there had been none of the crowds that beset yesterday's "classic" walk on the other side of the valley (although that might also be partly due to the fact that it was now Monday and the weekend crowds had gone home).
Wall Painting Back in Chamonix, we walked past this impressive painting on the side of a building.
Flowers More nice flower arrangements.
Raclette At dinner in the evening I opted to try the alleged local speciality "raclette". However, I was not entirely convinced this wasn't some sort of tourist gimmick and the waiting staff stand just out of sight laughing at the stupid tourist. The "raclette" is a hinged plate that lays flat over a flame on which you can "cook", i.e. melt, the cheese supplied with your meal. Once the cheese is molten, you can tip the cooking plate, as I'm doing in the picture, to deposit the cheese on your plate. Given that I don't mind eating solid cheese, the whole exercise seemed a bit pointless. But there you go. When in Chamonix, do as the Chamonixians do. Allegedly.While we were having dinner, there was a massive thunderstorm that caused all of the street lights to go out for about 15 minutes. Very exciting.
Mont Blanc Tunnel Tuesday - Today we were transfering from Chamonix to Saas Fee. We had intended to drive north through the mountain pass into Switzerland. However, about a mile north of Chamonix we found ourselves stuck in a queue of traffic. As we approached the front of the queue, it became apparent that the cars we'd seen coming the other way were actually cars from our queue that were turning around. When we got to the front of the queue, a nice man told us that they'd decided to dig up the entire road, which would be closed for at least the next couple of hours.Rather than hang around in the hope that they really would open the road later (they were French after all, so they would probably go on strike in a couple of hours anyway), we decided to take the only other route to Switzerland, through the Mont Blanc Tunnel, as shown in the photo. It wasn't exactly a straightforward alternative as it added about 40 miles to our journey and a one-way ticket through the tunnel cost around £30. Plus we had to pay about a tenner in motorway tolls in Italy.
Gran San Bernardo Tunnel So having driven through the Mont Blanc Tunnel into Italy, we still had to get into Switzerland. The quickest way to do this was through the Gran San Bernardo Tunnel, which cost another £20. I was beginning to think that maybe the tunnel owners had dug up the road north of Chamonix to drum up a bit of extra business.
Super Frugal Once we were out of the tunnel there was quite a lot of gentle downhill driving, which seemed to be to the liking of the trip computer in our hire car. At one point (shown in the photo) it reckoned we would be able to get another 2,085 miles out of the tank of diesel.
Saas Fee A couple of hours later we arrived in Saas Fee. Saas Fee is a car-free town, so we parked up in a huge multi-storey car park on the edge of town and phoned the hotel, who sent a little electric buggy to pick us up (seen in the bottom left of the photo).This is a photo of our hotel, the Hotel Du Glacier, which was very nice indeed (again, it came highly recommended on Trip Advisor). Their sun terrace is a particularly nice place to down couple glasses of beer (or wine) whilst admiring the view of the mountains and glaciers.
Beer And here is one. This was my favourite beer of the week. Very tasty.
Gorge Once we'd unpacked, we went for a bit of a walk around town. What starts out as a river at the top of the town turns into a gorge at the bottom and this is a picture of the bridge over it, with a very nicely presented hotel in the foreground.
Hiking Wednesday - Judith's legs were still sore from our hiking exploits in Chamonix, so I took the opportunity to get up early and go for a walk on my own. Even with the walking-free transfer day yesterday, my legs were still suffering a bit from my earlier downhill hiking exploits, so I decided that it might be a good idea to hike uphill today.The cablecar station at Plattjen offered an enthusiastic-but-not-bonkers ascent of 770m (2,526 feet), whilst providing an opportunity to meet up with Judith at the top. This is a picture from the trail just outside of town. Because the trail was on the north face of Mittaghorn, it was still completely in the shade early in the morning.
Berghaus Plattjen After about an hour I reached the Berghaus Plattjen hotel/restaurant. There was a nice view from here. Just to the right of the hotel you can see the end of Saas Fee. In the bottom of the valley, 240m (787 feet) lower, is the town of Saas Grund.
Judith When I was about 30 minutes from the top I texted Judith, who hopped on to the cablecar. A few minutes later she passed overhead. You'll have to trust me that this is a photo of her peering our of the cablecar.
Me This is the photo she took of me as she passed overhead.
Plattjen A short while later I arrived in Plattjen (2,570m - 8,431 feet). This was Judith (in the blue top) admiring the view.As it was still only late morning, we decided to go to Allalin for lunch, which is the highest readily accessible location in the area.So we got the cablecar down from Plattjen back to Saas Fee and walked to the Morenia cablecar. Having got the cablecar from Saas Fee to Morenia, we switched to another cablecar for the journey up to Felskinn. And at Felskinn we switched to a funnicular for the final stretch up to Allalin.
Allalin This was the view from the cablecar station at Allalin. Despite being around 20C in Saas Fee, it was -4C here at an altitude of 3,500m (11,482 feet). Consequently it's possible to ski here all year round. The Swiss and Swedish national ski teams were here training.
Restaurant Allalin has the world's highest revolving restaurant. It takes about 30 minutes to do a full revolution, which was just about how long it took to have a beer and a bite to eat. Handy.
Rosti Mmmmm. Rosti.
More Mentalists While we were having lunch, we noticed these two blokes out for a walk. This photo was taken with as much zoom as my camera could muster.
More Mentalists I've zoomed out a bit and added an arrow so you can see where they are.
More Mentalists I've zoomed out further and now they're almost impossible to see. Bonkers. We watched them for a while until they disappeared over the ridge (or fell down a crevase on the glacier - it was difficult to tell from where we were sitting).
Summer Luge After lunch we got the funnicular and cablecars back to Saas Fee.Our hiking passes came with a ticket for a free ride on the Summer Luge. The little car is dragged around 100m up the mountain side before starting its descent down a twisting track. You've got a brake to control your speed, but it's not clear what might happen to you if you chose not to use it. I wasn't brave enough to find out.Having got the lay of the track on my first run, I used the brake sparingly on my second run and managed to pass through the speed trap doing over 20mph! Whoosh!! I'm surprised my face didn't get ripped off by the g-forces.
Bridge I was taking this photo of the bridge over the gorge when we heard some whooping and shouting behind us. Moments later...
Zip Line ...this youth shot past on a zip line.
Zip Line Zoomed out a bit, you can see what a daredevil he is. We watched for a while as several more youths zipped by. They appeared to be completely unsupervised, attaching themselves to the zip line at the top and unhooking themselves at the bottom. I read in the news a few weeks later that a girl was killed on a zip line in Saas Fee. It seems likely that was here.
Cloudy Thursday - The clouds had descended on us. Incidentally, this is a photo of the Hotel Dom, which was a) the hotel next to ours, and b) the oldest hotel in Saas Fee, built in 1881. Our hotel is the second oldest hotel in Saas Fee, having been built in 1901.Judith claimed to still have sore legs, so I set out on another early morning hike up to a cablecar station that she could meet me at later. Today I decided to head for Langfluh, which was a slightly more ambitious 1,070m (3,510 feet) above Saas Fee.
Deer A short distance from town I stumbled upon this deer walking near the trail. It didn't hang around for long, so I only got chance for this shot, which appears to have focussed on the trees in the background, leaving the deer a bit blurry. Doh!
Goat A few minutes later I saw this goat, which was slightly more accommodating, allowing me to fire of several shots before it wandered off.
Spielboden After about 90 minutes I reached the cablecar station at Spielboden. This was 647m (2,122 feet)above Saas Fee, so about two thirds of the way up vertically. However, the path was getting steeper and rockier and the air was getting thinner, making walking harder. As you can see from the photo, I was well up into the clouds now.
Allalin About 45 minutes later I reached Langfluh. At 2,870m (9,416 feet), this was well above the clouds and the views were fabulous. I could see the revolving restaurant at Allalin, where we had lunch yesterday, in the distance.
Langfluh View Zoomed out, you can see how far away Allalin actually was. Most of the foreground of the photo is taken up with the Feegletscher, the enormous glacier that looks down on Saas Fee. The building on the right is the restaurant at Langfluh.
Judith About 15 minutes later, Judith arrived on the cablecar. It had also gone a bit cloudy. The weather changes very rapidly this high in the mountains, so fortunately the cloudy conditions didn't last long and a few minutes later it was gloriously sunny again.The cablecar shut for an hour at lunchtime, so we decided to stay at Langfluh for lunch and admired the view from their sun terrace for a while longer.
Saas Fee This was the view of the north end of Saas Fee from Langfluh. Our hotel is the large, white building right in the middle of the photo.
Brave? Once again we saw a couple of blokes out walking. Maybe the same blokes from yesterday?
Or just bonkers? Zooming out a bit, you can see that they were walking on the bit of the Feegletscher just above where enormous chasms are starting to form in the ice. One can only presume that they knew what they were doing.
Boots The restaurant had an interesting collection of old boots.
Spielboden After lunch we got the cablecar back down to Spielboden. Judith bought a bag of carrots and nuts and headed out onto the mountain side looking for marmots. It didn't take her long to find one.
Marmot Apparently they really like carrots.
Marmots And monkey nuts.
Marmot They've got really big teeth, so I was very keen not to let my fingers get too close to the being-eaten end of the carrot.
Are you looking at me? Big marmot looked quite interested in what little marmot was eating. They were definitely not shy about nicking food from each other, although this strategy was generally accompanied by much squeaking and wrestling.
Is your camera made of carrots by any chance? I think that was quite close enough. Time to move on.
Hannig We took the cablecar from Spielboden back to Sass Fee. As it was still only mid-afternoon, we decided to walk to the only cablecar in Saas Fee we'd not been on yet - the one to Hannig. This was the view from Hannig. That's Saas Almagell you can see in the bottom of the valley in the distance.
More Marmots And there were more marmots. Judith couldn't help but buy another bag of carrots and monkey nuts to feed them with.
Hohsaas Friday - We took a gentle 45 minute walk from Saas Fee down to Saas Almagell and then on down to Saas Grund, where we got the cablecar up to Kreuzboden.We arrived in Kreuzboden just as the cablecar shut for lunch, so decided to stop for lunch too (not that we had much choice).After lunch we got the next cablecar up to Hohsaas, which was pretty high up at 3,200m (10,498 feet). Unfortunately the view from the cablecar on the way up wasn't brilliant, but we were optimistic that we might pop out of the clouds at the top for another awesome view.
Hohsaas No such luck. It was just as cloudy at the top. Doh! Not much to do then other than get back in the cablecar and go back to Saas Grund.We got the Post Bus from Saas Grund back to Saas Almagell and retraced our earlier route back to Saas Fee.
"Bitter"? Back in Saas Fee we popped into the Aussie Bar for a beer. This is called Victoria Bitter. Although it's difficult to tell from the dark bottle, it tasted a lot more like lager than bitter.
Mattmark Dam Saturday - Our last day, but we just had time after checking out of the hotel to drive up to Mattmark for a look at the dam and lake. Unfortunately, the clouds were still not playing ball and the views were somewhat limited. Still, we had a bit of time to spare, so we hung around hoping that the rapidly changing mountain weather might rapidly change in our favour.
Stausee Mattmark After about 15 minutes the clouds started to lift a little, giving us glimpses of the potential views on offer.
HDR This seemed like an excellent opportunity to try out a HDR photo and bring a little depth and detail out of the otherwise highly monochrome and featureless view.
Volvo Eventually it was time to leave Mattmark and take our final drive in our hired Volvo back to Geneva Airport.It was a shame we didn't have more opportunity to drive our Volvo V70 D5 AWD about as it was very comfortable and well equipped (leather, sat-nav, smart wheels, powered tailgate, etc). I did't think I would be rushing out to buy one just yet, but they had certainly risen a few places in my table of cars-I'd-consider-buying-if-the-conditions-were-right.
Flying Home The flight home was one of the more pleasant we had ever experienced. The plane was fairly quiet and there were only four other people in the Business Class cabin.The flight took a little longer than scheduled as French Air Traffic Control were on strike (what was I saying about the French and strikes earlier?!), requiring us to fly east into German airspace before flying north through Germany and over the Netherlands.We got the best views of London I'd ever seen from the air as we approached Heathrow. Unfortunately that was just after we'd been told to turn off all of our electronic devices, so I didn't manage to get any photos. Double doh!Despite the cloudy conditions of the last couple of days, we'd had another fantastic Swiss (and French) holiday. So Switzerland remained firmly at the top of my favourite-countries-in-the-world-to-visit list and we were already looking forward to going back.