Chamonix Trip Report - Days 4, 5 and 6 - Le Tour, Courmayeur and Grand Montets

On day 4 we took the train to Le Tour. This was a pretty easy way to get there. No need for a car. The train was new, good schedule and well organized. We took the train to Vallorcine and took the gondola there into the ski area. then returned via

bus from Le Tour. It was a pretty good loop. This area was pretty cool with the west half being lots of trees and rock much like Alta, and the south east half be wide open with not a tree in sight.

That night we walked over the Maison de la Montagne and booked a guide for Courmayeur with the Compagnie des Guides de Chamonix. It was pretty cool having this place about 50 feet from our hotel. It became a nightly visit to talk with the guides and plan the next day. Early the next morning we stuffed ourselves with as much bread, cheese, yogurt and coffee as we could and stumbled out the door to meet our guides and the rest of our group. We all loaded into vans and drove through the Mont Blanc tunnel to Italy. To Begin with, we had a pretty big group of about 20 with 4 guides. Were were going to do some evaluation runs where the guides would test us and split us up into groups. these are always some tentative moments because you have no idea what the caliber of skiers will be. I recommended to Jill that she buckle her boots up tight and try her best to impress. Pierre, the lead guide asked everyone to follow him closely and immediately ducked off the piste into tight trees, over rocks and around bushes in an effort to loose everyone. Jill was stuck
to him like glue. When he finally stopped and Jill sprayed up next to him I was so proud. We waited as others tickled in or collected their gear after tumbles. We had
both made the top group and would be following Pierre for the rest of the day. We had the luxury of having a ski instructor, Jeujuex, and a guide in our group. a Jeujuex was awesome and he and I had fun all day picking alternate lines on the areas Pierre took us. They took us down through some trees to a big meadow with a few stone biudlings covered in snow where our groups reunited fro lunch. Inside this cozy little building was just our group, a wood stove, big furs covering the benches to sit in and the proprietor to bing us plate after plate of food. You didn't order, she just brought out whatever they were making. First she brought a pizza with fresh tomatoes, garlic and basil, then a pizza with butter and garlic, then a plat of pasta. When she brought the first plate of pasta I though: "mmm, that looks good, but its kind of small." Little did I know that it was the first of three types of pasta she would bring. After that, she brought out four kinds of desert and espresso, then finally some hot wine. 2 and half hours after starting lunch stumbled back outside and clicked into our skis. Many of the runs Pierre took us on were super tight trees that were steep. and there were bushed mixed in between the trees. They were the kind of runs that if I took my friends there, they would all say: "This is the last time were following you!" For the last run, Pierre let Juejuex take a selected group on Final "Le Desent De Juer" which was probably the steepest tree run either of us had ever gone on. We will never forget making it out into the valley below Mont Blanc as the sun set and following the road back to the car. I was so happy and so proud of Jill. It was the best she had ever skied and she definite had some break thoughts on that day.



Each night we had amazing times in Chamonix and ate, drank and wandered in awe at being there, ski culture and the people.

We had so much fun that we decided to ski with Pierre again the next day in Grand Montets. We did the usual evaluation runs and I will never forget Jill's face when they handed her a climbing harness and told her she was in the expert group and would be going out onto the glacier. She was so proud as she looked at me and said,"Expert, Ive never been and expert before!" We had great runs which included the Glacier D'Argentiere and views over to the Aiguille Du Midi where we longed desperately to go.

The New Frontier

Here is a colection of great ski clips:

SKIPOPOW Teaser 4 from TKB Films on Vimeo.

SKIPOPOW - Teaser HD Ski Freeride Film from TKB Films on Vimeo.

Superior, Speed Fly from Marshall Miller on Vimeo.

Thank You from NIMBUS INDEPENDENT on Vimeo.

Chamonix Trip Report - Day 3 - Brevent and Flegere

We awoke with a start early the next morning and looked out the window to just see the sun hitting the top of Mont Blanc. It was a perfect bluebird day. I had been feeling pretty far from home but its amazing how even on the other side of the Atlantic, once I had my trusty boots buckled up tight, polypropolyen against my skin, my skis on my feet I felt right at home among the rocks, trees and trams of Chamonix. We started by walking from the hotel up to the Telecabine Chamonix-Planpraz in our new Technical Extreme gear and our rented 85mm underfoot Moment skis. No line
whatsoever and we had a bin to ourselves. The view of the mountain world from the PlanPraz was mind blowing. Clouds swirled below and bad ass black crows swooped and hovered over the exposure with the Mont Blanc massif as a backdrop. Cold snow crystals floated in the blue sky glinting in the sun. The Telepherique Planpraz- Brevent started from a location candalevered out over the cliffs and went up to an impossible summit in one fell swoop...No towers, no nothing, just rock, snow and air. As we went up I spotted my line. It was a series of untracked faces, skiers right, in between a cat track that weaved its way down Piste Charles Bozon. It was difficult to figure out what was open, what was closed, what was off-piste. Some places are actually posted as closed, but you can still go. Some places have no ropes or signs but are still very dangerous. We had no beacons. I was ducking ropes to get to my line. The snow was like no other I had ever seen before... I was a meter of dust on crust. and by dust I mean it was the lightest snow I had every seen. Lighter than 40 years of skiing in CO and UT, and by crust I mean that it was pretty icy. When you skied the thigh deep snow you could not even feel it on your legs and your skies jumped around underneath like you where skiing on some set up death cookies.

It wasn't epic good, but it was epic weird. I expected my line to sluff, and sluff it did, but I made the decision to ski with the moving snow as it was so light and my pitches were short enough. The WildSnow swirled up over and around me as I dropped into my first off-piste line in Chamonix. Wont forget it. We zigzagged our way across the ski area in awe of the possibilities and the differences from what what were used to. At the Index chair at Flegere it got windy and there was a lot of snow to transport. We saw some foot deep slabs cut loose spontaneously from the chair. We skied one off-piste line here carefully picking safe terrain. On the next lap the chair was closed to avalanches.

What a satisfying day. We didn't care about our luggage anymore. We knew we were good to go. Jill and I reveled in sharing this adventure, the comraderee, friendship and love in an apres ski bliss as we recounted each run over beer, cheese and meat.

Chamonix Trip Report - Day 2 - Joyeux Noel

It was pretty Christmasy in our little room the next morning. I brought coffee in bed for Jill, there was tons of snow coming down outside and we had our gifts that we had packed in our carry-ons. There was the advent calendar from Nammy and the tiny little wrapped box mom had sent us off with for our stocking which was a miniature Christmas music box with a miniature snow covered town and moving train. This is the music box that looks just like Chamonix and that you can put in your pocket and have Christmas anywhere.It was GreyBird in Chamonix Christmas morning and its good thing, because being there in any other kind of weather without skis would have would have promptly caused me to turn into either a little pile of slush or a huge car sized boulder tumbling down a 45 degree slope. So it was pretty easy to take this day to: 1)wait to see if our ski gear arrived 2)get over our jetlag 3)eat a huge french style Christmas meal 4) scope out the ski rental scene.
It was a tough call because our luggage included not only all our ski cloths and skis, but also all our other gear such as rope, harnesses, hardware, beacon probe, shovel and cameras. You can't rent ski cloths so we were faced with the decision of purchasing entire outfits with the posibility of our luggage showing up that very moment. Three things made the decision for us: First was our discovery of the store
"Technical Extreme" This place had super dirt cheap ski cloths. Second factor was a bar conversation. We were is a little back alley of Chamonix in a tiny little bar drinking beer. As the night went on we began a conversation with he bar tender, a super young kid from Bazil and was fluent in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese. We began talking about the mountains. When I asked him if he skied or snowboarded he exclaimed: "I am a Freerider!" He was super animated and excited about skiing. He was a pro and explained to us that it had been snowing for three days and that there was 1 meter 10 cm of fresh and that the sky was clearing and that at 6:30am he would be on an early bin and start hiking at Brevant with his telle and alpine bros for a deep bluebird photo shoot. Third and deciding factor was an email from my father that went something like this:

"Did I ever tell you about the night Alastair and Brad and I spent in the Gondola at the top? We had just come down from, and I'll not have the spelling correct, El Dromidair and the Aquie DuMidi. It was too late to catch a ride down, we'd spent the previous sleepless night in a hut, playing cards by candle lite with a deck that had the Jack of Spades missing. Remind me to tell you what happened, if I've not
already."

or there was this note:

"I told you once, I believe, of my first journey to Chamonix. It was around 15 Dec, 1963. I had leave from my army base in Hiedelberg and was headed there to meet Brad Reed, who got leave from his Radio-Free-Europe US Coast Guard cutter in the Mediterranean. I took a wrong turn at some rail station just before i was to arrive in Chamonix and ended up around midnight with my cog-train clacking up a steep ridge and finally pulling into a very small village for the night. It was the first huge snow storm with the wet flakes were stacking deeply and there were 4 of us with no place to stay. I had my extended Kelty aluminum frame expedition pack with crampons and ropes and my first REI external frame tent. Between the four us there was, as I remember, not a shared language. We all trudged up from the station, very cold and tired and finally pounded on the door of what seemed like the the hotel where Hansel and Grettel would stay. After a while a fine old "Kurtish" kind of man came and welcomed us all happily into his great room where the big fire was still going. The Hotel was closed, but he brought us big glasses of hot wine, a loaf of very dark bread and a pan of melted butter and then said goodnight and left us to "camp" on his great-room floor in front of his fire with the big logs. He let none of us pay and by noon the next day I was in Chamonix and had met up with Brad and Alastair at the La National, the climbing guides bar and hang-out, just along the glacial river and off the central square.

Anyway, more than you wanted to read when you could be skiing. It only seems like yesterday now with you there. So go ski, even if you have to rent or borrow skis!"

So now maybe you see why I love my father's stories and why it is so great when he writes them all down or tells them in detail. and maybe now you see why these notes were the deciding factor in helping us make our decision about what our next course of action would be.

Chamonix Trip Report - Day 1 - The Journey

We knew we were flying into the heart of the storm...but we went anyway. The news had been littered with images of passengers sleeping on the floor with lumpy piles of luggage and headlines like: “European Deep Freeze Causes Travel Chaos!” …and we were traveling on Christmas Eve, so it was the perfect storm for travel trouble. I figured we had about a 30% chance of making our scheduled flights and about a 70% chance of spending Christmas in the airport, so we picked our carry-on items carefully. These included our ski boots...the most coveted item for any skier. We also brought the advent calendar Nammy had given us and from my mother, a piece of marzipan and a very small wrapped package that we were to save for our stave for our stockings. I also packed one gift for my sweetie. I was picturing us huddled on the floor of CDG around a small Christmas tree constructed of found objects singing Christmas carols with a few lost families from around the world.
Even on the morning we left, the Delta website was warning of delays due to winter weather in Atlanta, our first stopping leg. Atlanta, That's way south!. We drank campaign on the flight to CDG in celebration of our journey and our excitement. I was under the impression that we would somehow slip though based on some of Jonah’s travel luck having rubbed off on me. Alas, just when we thought we might somehow slip through, we saw the dreaded words “cancelled” in red on the monitor next to our destination, Geneva Switzerland. We were trapped in an odd no man's land of the airport. We had no valid boarding pass to get to the gates but we didn't want to leave the secured area because we knew that in some cases they were not allowing people backing the airport due to the overcrowding situation. People were disparate in line. Some bailed to take the train, but I had read that there were thousands sleeping at the train station. We discussed taking the train with the Spanish couple but we would not be able to get our luggage if we bailed on the plane. The small area where we waited did not have restrooms. We waited for four hours. And at about noon they did rebook us on flight to Geneva at 8:30 that evening. Our gate was semi superdome...People sleeping on the floor everywhere people waiting in long lines. The snow fell outside.

We got a SIM card for our borrowed phone but couldn't get it to work. We needed to call the hotel and shuttle to let them know we were late so that we would have ride and a room when we got there. We tried using the pay phone. This totally reminded me of when Jonah and I had arrived at CDG 20 years earlier with no place to stay and had trying to figure out the coins and buttons on the phone in vain, before taking a taxi into town to see what we could find. This time Jill figured it out and we were able to make both calls. So we had seats on the 8:30pm flight to Geneva but there was a 3:30 flight with 55 people on the waiting list. The flight boarded and there was a crowd around the gate, I thought probably for the waiting list, but no names or other info came up on the screens. There was lots of heated discussions in all languages other than English at the front of the line or crowd. One potential passenger after another left dejected and it now looked like the flight door must be closed as everyone had left. A had been standing at the back of the crowd which had now dispersed and now found myself right up at the counter and wasn’t sure why I was even there except out of boredom. The attendant looked up at me and I said: "Is their room for my wife and I?" He looked at me and to my great surprise, he said: “absolutely!!" He printed us out two boarding passes, wished us a merry Christmas and we got on the plane. We were the last two. Of course this is probably where we lost our bags.

But I had made a conscious decision to get us there even if it cost us our bags. The true implications would only sink in the next morning when I discovered what it feels like to be in the center of the ski universe without your skis. We took the shuttle into Chamonix and couldn't believe how snowy and cool looking the town was, driving around these little streets in the snowstorm.
When we finally pulled up to the Hotel Faucigny I couldn’t believe we where there. And it looked like it was out of a fairy tail. It was old, covered in snow and ice, and had small Christmas lights. On the locked front door was a small note to Jill and I welcoming us, wishing us merry Christmas and instructions for getting into our room. It was a Christmas Eve we will never forget.

The Journey from Aaron Stanford on Vimeo.