Chamonix/Courmayeur 2/20-23/18

Started this trip out with 3 days in Paris, then got a one way rental car to head to the Chamonix Valley (and fly out of Geneva). 6 hour drive from Paris to Chamonix was nice, mostly countryside with some small villages seen set on hillsides. Once you pass Geneva (and pay mucho $$$ for tolls!) you quickly get into the foothills of the Alps...
This would be my first time skiing in Europe, and the Alps, so a major bucket list item. It was the most amazing ski experience of all time. The scenery and mass to these zones is unbelievable.
I'll try and let the pics do most of the talking:

Arriving in the Chamonix valley, you could just tell you were about to be surrounded by massive mountains
We were headed to an AirBnB that we had found months earlier, perched up overlooking town, this was our view. Aiguille du Midi seen on the right in the first pic
First night we walked around town and then checked out the local microbrewery for dinner:
We were staying right down the street from the Brévent cable car, so we walked past it on the way to town to scope out the scene/walking route for the morning. This station is situated right in the middle of a neighborhood which was pretty cool.
Cool status board

First ski day was at Brévent-Flégère.  A few minutes walk got us to the Plan Praz gondola, which gets you from town up to the ski area.  From the top of Plan Praz, you access the Brévent cable car, which gets you up to the black runs and associated off-piste to the far lookers left of the ski area.  Went through the clouds and out on the other side:





Plan was to work from left to right and try and cover the whole Brévent-Flégère area and make it back by closing time to get back down Plan Praz gondola and back to our place.  Going all the way over to Flégère and back down that cable car at the end of the day would pretty much place you in a completely different town.



This is the cable car line that connects Brévent to Flégère.  They were made into one ski area sometime in the 90s I believe it was



It was kinda foggy in the morning, so I don't have too many good Brévent photos from the first day (good ones came on day 3, I skied this area twice, since the first day my wife wasn't skiing and it was just easy to walk to the lift by myself from our place, I scoped out where she could best ride to enjoy the place and we came back the last day together). Once I got over to the Flégère side, the sun started to come out, and the views really started to show themselves.  It was much more open landscape on this side, all above treeline.





Spotted a nice line off the lift, easy traverse along the rocks in this photo upper left





Poma lift gets you over the next ridge




Traversed out above some groomers to some lightly tracked snow



Some cool shots of the on-piste surrounded by endless line options off-piste right nextdoor





In several of these photos you can see Les Grands Montets across the valley along with the Argentière Glacier to it's left and Mer de Glace to the right.



This was a good run



Quick stop for a beer, had to at least check out the mid-mountain bar La Chavanne



Reppin' the FACE hard...



Would end up skiing the line right above my head on day 3.



Excellent views from La Chavanne



Mont Blanc in the cloud



Back over to Brévent



A few last runs working my way back to the gondola I came in on in the morning





Spotted one last line from the chair, so looped back to hit it.  Took a very demanding traverse over avy debris from couloirs above, but tired legs still got me to this last line of the day

Looking back halfway down from above



And down...



Called it a day, thinking about how effing awesome skiing Europe is.

Day 2: Headed through the Mont Blanc tunnel popping out on the Italian side about 30 mins later
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Courmayeur is pretty much teh first town you hit within 5 minutes of passing through the border control

Took the cable car from town up to the base area which has a number of bars and resturants


I skied solo on day 1 in France, but my wife was out today, as she wanted to have her first day at a more intermediate friendly place.  Courmayeur definately has more groomed runs than the French side of Mont Blanc

Took some wide open groomers first thing in the morning

Looking down over the base and further into town at the head of the Valle d'Aosta

My wife enjoying that nice grooming:

Lunch at Refugio Maison Vieille.  Did some research on this, as Courmayeur has many resturants scattered throughout the mtn and this one had great reviews.




After lunch headed to the upper cable car



Another lift to off-piste only area

Pano shot from outside this station...Monte Bianco in the clouds

Glacier exit

Traversed all the way out lookers left to ski the last bit of untouched leftovers


A little Apres Ski...they love playing house music at all these places

Back into town

Local Guides HQ

Closed the night out with a couple beers and this table of free food for happy hour....didn't need to eat dinner after this one!


Back to France!

Wow

That is not Killington for sure.

Ray

While we are waiting for the full report, it might help to watch this:

Great ski flick...

I will never get tired of looking at those pictures

Took hundreds of pictures.  Going to take some time to comb through and find the best ones and come up with a TR.  Stand by!

By the way, what's the best way to post pics on here for largest size/quality?
Also, I've got a couple iphone vids...post to youtube then link here somehow?

I do all my posting via iPhone so I just click Add Image and Choose File, then select from my photos and then choose Big Size.

I do all of my videos through my Vimeo account, haven’t tried YouTube.

I just choose the "large" button when I post pics. There are instructions for imbedding video on here somewhere (I think in the woodstove) but it doesn't work from an iPhone or iPad. You have to do the videos from a real computer if you want them to imbed properly. Or just post a link to YouTube and ask Harv for help embedding.

Added first part.  More later. I wish these iphone pics wouldn't post crooked.

ADmiKe wrote

Added first part.  More later. I wish these iphone pics wouldn't post crooked.

There’s a fix for that also. Go into photos, hit edit, go to the crop button, use the rotate tool to rotate it all the way around, maybe crop a tiny bit off the edges, then save it, repost it

Beautiful pics by the way.

Brownski wrote

ADmiKe wrote

Added first part.  More later. I wish these iphone pics wouldn't post crooked.

There’s a fix for that also. Go into photos, hit edit, go to the crop button, use the rotate tool to rotate it all the way around, maybe crop a tiny bit off the edges, then save it, repost it

Yeh I usually rotate, save, rotate, save, post but it's a pain in the ass to do for a whole TR.  I'll fix 'em later when I'm done

Added first ski day, Italy next

DomB wrote

Wow

 What he said

It's crazy how you generally only see vids of the real deal extreme ski stuff from Cham, you know- the big giant faces with massive exposure but from your pictures it looks like there is a ton of fun and playful freeride terrain there that doesn't have such high consequences.

Looks like the trip of a lifetime!

raisingarizona wrote

It's crazy how you generally only see vids of the real deal extreme ski stuff from Cham, you know- the big giant faces with massive exposure but from your pictures it looks like there is a ton of fun and playful freeride terrain there that doesn't have such high consequences.

Looks like the trip of a lifetime!

Yes there was no shortage of very mild in-bounds "off-piste".

Also, looked like some very easy access with little to no climbing to get into some crazy stuff.



Still need to finish up this TR...