Trip to Chamonix

I'm going to write this one in English, since everyone doesn't speak Swedish and English is the language I use most here anyway.

So this weekend, 6-8.6, me and 9 Finnish guys drove to Chamonix to do some hiking and admire the Alps. I won't write about every detail, but brace yourselves for a lot of pictures! (click on the picture if you want to get a closer look)

Friday: Driving to Chamonix-Mont Blanc, not a bad view at all!

The hostel we stayed at, Le Chamoniard Volant. Nothing special, but it was affordable (by Chamonix standards anyway) and it had everything we needed.

A history lesson about Mont Blanc. That's how it's done!

Saturday: The train station where we took the train to Mer de Glace, a glacier.

Here is the view over the glacier. Yes, it's the sand-looking thing down in the valley.

We hiked down to the glacier (well, it was mostly just hundreds of stairs), this is where you can go in

Inside the glacier! It was cool (both temperature and the actual experience)

Enjoying the sun by the Montenvers train station, waiting for the train. As you can see the weather was phenomenal, around 30°C and sunny all day.

Then it was time to go up to Aiguille du Midi, a 3800m high peak right next to Mont Blanc. This is the kind of "téléphérique" that we took up there, it was quite shaky but the view was of course stunning. The temperature up there was something like +2°C, so a big contrast to the heat down in the valley.

As you can see, Mont Blanc was right behind Aiguille du Midi. It looked like it was pretty much the same altitude, but actually it was 1000m higher! No wonder mountain climbers have to sleep one night at the base camp in the valley before attempting to go up there.

Just amazing. Although quite a lot of tourists, even though it was definitely off-season.

Aiguille du Midi

#montblancselfie

Mont Blanc is the white peak in the middle, slightly behind the other one. On the hill on the left you can see one bigger dot, which is a helicopter that we saw rescuing a climber from the wall of the mountain.

The dots down there are tents which form the base camp for people attempting to climb Mont Blanc.

Up there it was quite hard to breathe because of the thin air, and I at least got very light-headed. But we didn't stay up there for too long.

Sunday: Time for hiking!

Again, gorgeous views. Despite that, it was really exhausting to go up the mountain. It was like 30°C hot and the altitude (around 1500-2000m) just got me more out of breath but didn't make the air cool :D

Taking a break during the climb, with Mont Blanc in the background. A steinbock (vuorikauris) decided to do the same. This view alone would easily have made the climb worth while!

It was quite rocky and steep. Here we had to climb up ladders to be able to get to the top, a bit scary but mostly cool!

Here we are, almost at the top. I was really dead at this point, someone said the whole ascent was like 700m (vertically), and I can assure you it was a very good workout!

I had to have a picture of the snow of course! 

A lot of loose rocks, you really had to watch your feet constantly.

As we started to go down we saw a lot of beautiful streams

After finishing the hike we drove back "home" to Geneva! This picture is from right outside of Chamonix, there's a freeway on that bridge, which I found quite impressive.

That was the end of a really nice weekend! I couldn't have started my summer here in a better way :)

Take care and enjoy the Finnish summer, I am enjoying the French/Swiss one for sure!