Hiking above the clouds and cheeses in the valley of Chamonix
IN THE RUBRIC ABOUT TRAVEL Our heroines talk about their trips around the world. In this issue, Bookmate creative director Nadya Yurinova talks about how to climb the mountain peaks around Mont Blanc, walk along routes with a height difference from 300 to 1100 meters and eat luxurious ban.
How did i get there
Actually, I'm not a real outsourcer. Yes, we have a tent, sleeping bags and even a Jetboil, but all this is usually reproachfully dangling in the trunk and is used no more than a couple of times a season, and someone in the summer cottage. So preparing for a mountain hiking trip was exciting for me: what if, what if? Mountain sickness, exhaustion, dehydration, just laziness. But the long trip to the Himalayan foothills and the arrival in the Swiss snows "with one eye" for a day from Italy last summer made it clear to me that the mountains are mine. And in general, in cities, free time has long been reluctant to spend.
We chose Chamonix - this place has already caused a strong dependence on several of our friends. The French center of mountain tourism, the Mecca of climbers, climbers and skiers, the venue for the first in the history of the Winter Olympic Games in 1924, the town is located in the valley of the same name at the foot of the Mont Blanc massif (4,810 meters and the highest point in Europe, not counting Elbrus). Rocks rise from both sides of a narrow seventeen-kilometer valley steeply and immediately, so that there are no cows with bells. Only upstairs - on foot or on one of the many lifts, between which you can travel by bus or train. Plan: settle near the center of Chamonix and take a walk around the neighborhood, returning to the base every evening.
The first days in the clouds
At first, the weather was unlucky: 15-17 degrees Celsius, rains, and most importantly, everything was covered with dense clouds. It is not clear where we arrived: above two meters of two hundred mountains are not visible, only the forest on the lower part of the slopes, the forest in the clouds. But lucky with the apartment with Airbnb, and even more with its owner, who met us with a bottle of wine and a detailed map of routes, suggested where to go while it was overcast, and predicted the sun in a couple of days.
These two days we spent in dense fog on the "warm-up" trails on the border of clouds. Preparation is simple: a pair of sandwiches and a bottle of water in a backpack - and you can go even for the whole day. It goes at first tightly, breathing gets off, but the farther, the easier. Yes, and quickly stop paying attention to this discomfort: wet, thick and even too green forest reminds of all fairy tales at once. Pines, ferns, mosses, stones, blueberries, strawberries. Ate - washed down with water from the stream. On the path every now and then you disagree with someone or overtake other groups or lonely runners: Bonjour - Bonjour. There are a lot of runners, by the way: trail running is perhaps the most popular summer sport in these places, the main showcase of any sports store is dedicated to ultralight running clothes and shoes. Wild HLS.
Further - above
The sun really came out on the third day and showed the whole epic of the local nature, which I do not dare to describe. Who cares, I recommend "Google Photos", and even better - immediately any site with airline tickets (fly to Geneva). On the third day, I stopped rubbing my shoes, on the fourth, colleagues in a working mailbox dreamed of, and on the fifth it was already difficult to stop: even before that summit, still behind that hummock, from that side to take a look. Through the forest, along the rockfall, through the snow, along a narrow path through the watershed, we go to Switzerland, let's go to Italy. Wherever you go, it will be beautiful and different, the quintessence of everything that in the European consciousness is responsible for the concept of natural beauty, from idyllic to heartbreaking.
The longest and richest day turned out to be the sixth, when the owner of our apartment, Gerald, invited us to go together. For 10 hours of non-stress walk, he told us everything that you could not read in the guidebook. About where I went, what peaks I conquered, where I was skiing, and how to go so as not to get tired ("We start slow - we finish slow"). About how glaciers are melting - global warming is presented here as a graphic illustration, and locals go under the glacier once a year to collect garbage from picnics thirty years ago. The fact that in addition to the size of the glaciers has changed in recent years. For example, ice climbing on the ground is already prohibited - everything is melting too intensively, it is too dangerous to rely on even the most ancient ice.
He also told about how the groundhog spends the winter - waking up in the hole once every two weeks to go to the toilet, driving the heart rate from four beats per minute to normal and back (I want to spend the same time). How not to frighten mountain chamois to get closer to it (they let us go three meters). About what kind of a flower - the terms of mountain orchids, lilies, bells and thousands of relatives clover. The fact that you can and should go with the trail. We were lucky with Gerald, in general.
What else to do
Hiking is not the only option to spend time here in the summer. Every morning we had breakfast on the balcony overlooking the peaks, under which about 50 paragliders were flying, and they were sitting on the lawn right in front of us. Some of the slopes are ideal for downhill, there are many specially prepared and marked bike trails, and on foot trails there are always traces of the tread. You can go rock climbing with an instructor. You can fly on a glider. You can just ride the lifts and the funicular - this is enough to go crazy (in a good way), drove to the very top, to the icy and dramatically harsh peaks or to the blue edge of the glacier, which is cracking and crumbling in front of your eyes. Well, it is possible, having overdone with beauty, to spend a day at the pool or spa. In general, Chamonix is such a gigantic park of active entertainment for any time of the year, age and state of health, there are even options for wheelchair users. I'm not sure that somewhere else there are places with such a concentration of opportunities for outdoor recreation in combination with tourist infrastructure.
In the evening, you can go shopping (a great choice of outdoor brands and, of course, French pharmacy cosmetics), go to a restaurant or go to the supermarket for cheeses and wine. Oh. About food is a separate conversation: it is terribly tasty and terribly high in calories. Tartars, duck pate, gratin, rakletov, eclairs and creme brulee go with a bang and - hurray! - burn without a trace the next day in the next campaign. Best on the ground (the region is called Upper Savoy) with cheeses, I remember all the tomme (tomme) and reblochon (reblochon), the main local specialty. From the dishes I recommend to try a tartifflet, an analogue of gratin, but instead of Gruyere - reblochon. Zhiir. Before leaving, you can buy bourgeois excesses in the supermarket or on the Saturday farmer's market in the central square - the products are better packaged for transportation in the store, the choice is wider in the market, the prices are about the same. You cannot forbid living beautifully - but do not forget about the weight of baggage, there is a danger of being carried away.
What to take and what to prepare for in the future
The only thing that is definitely worth buying specially before the trip is trekking boots. They will secure the ankle and allow less to look at his feet, and more - on the sides. And there is no way to go without a good sanskrin - I didn’t have enough thirty, I bought the SPF50 on the spot. It would be good to have walking sticks, they remove the extra load from the knee joints (which will still hurt a little) and significantly help to walk, transferring part of the weight to the arms. I suspect that the sticks there can be rented.
Clothes, in principle, will suit any, but if there is a special one, it will be much more pleasant to walk. I had my standard country set of thin windproof fleece (softshell), so as not to freeze in the wind and burn in the sun, membrane jacket in case of rain or heavy fog and light down jacket Uniqlo, which I wore on the upper viewing platforms, where the temperature tends to zero. Panama or cap is also not superfluous. Clothes "on the way out" you can not take, because the exit here only in open space.
By the way, in addition to day trips, there are plenty of longer options - for example, the Tour du Mont Blanc roundabout for 7-10 days overnight in mountain shelters, where you can have dinner, take a shower, spend the night in a clean bed (without a separate room) and move on. But this is next summer, but for now we are buying tickets to Nepal. Because I passed the first mountain test and now I’ll definitely go on - on and on.