Alpine walking is so cool

For a start there’s the views. Go to Scotland and walk around, notice how it all seems so tall and pointy? Now come to the Alps… it’s huge! That white domed peak across the valley might look “a bit high”, but then you start to pick out details like cable car runs and three storey buildings… and when a three storey building appears as a 2mm high black blob on the skyline, the mountain suddenly snaps into scale.

The paths are great too. We went for a walk up the opposite side of the valley to all the high interesting stuff and were lead up out of a pine forest by a nice, neat, gentle path. It took us two hours to zigzag up it, but it was two hours of mindless trudging, rather than wading through knee deep mud and lumpy Scottish grass.

To make things even better, there was a cable car at the top. Two hours up, two minutes down. Awesome, I like that idea, I like it a lot. More please. Cable cars are cool, they feel exactly like the flimsy boxes they are, swinging about over the valley. There’s a moment of dropping as the car rolls over the end of the pylons that hold the cable up and for a second your brain tricks you into thinking you’re on a roller coaster. Then it sedately continues downwards as before.

My GPS worked very well and I have managed to put up a track of today’s walking. You can look at it here http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=38865

I took some great photos too. I can’t upload them from here though, the wifi isn’t that good and my dad’s Eee would have a fit trying to do it.

Tags: alps, blog365, cable car, Chamonix, gps, Walking