Bad Skiing, Good Hiking

We came to Chamonix-Mont Blanc for the skiing. The only snow here is either in glacier form, on north facing slops of the Mont Blanc Massif, or on south facing slopes in ski resorts (read: artificial).

It's been a bad year for snow here in the Alps. It sounds like the only good snow in Europe was the exact month we were in the Dolomites. Yay! And, reports from Norway are that the snow there is fantastic. So after more hiking here and in Switzerland, we'll be ready for skiing again.

 The town of Chamonix is at about 1000 meters and the snow level is about 2000 meters. There is plenty of good hiking to be had between those two! 

The view is great at 2000 meters.

 The weather was sunny and warm on our first day of hiking. This came after 2-3 stormy days which dropped a lot of snow. Kristin is hiking over an old avalanche run-out zone here. But on this day we saw at least thirty avalanches happen, some natural and some skier triggered. It was a crazy crazy day!

Wilderness doesn't really exist in Western Europe. We hiked to this glacier lookout, only to find that we could have taken a gondola OR a train instead. We had the trail to ourselves otherwise. 

We don't have internet at our place this week, but we do for the following three weeks. So I'll be able to post more regularly then.