Road trip to Chamonix - Gondolas,Trains and Automobiles

We just returned from 2 days/1 night in Chamonix, which is France's answer to Whistler (although I suspect they wouldn't put it like that).  It's less that an hour from Bonneville so it would also be an easy day trip.  However we decided to stay a night and save some driving ...

We got off to an early start and arrived before noon.  The first thing we noticed was the number of para-sailers in the sky, dozens and dozens.  (On the last day we saw some taking off, they just ran down the hill trailing their parachute until they were lifted off the ground.)

For our first day we did a hike from the town of Chemonix up to the glacier, it was about 3.5 hours of hiking round-trip with about a 600m elevation gain.  This is the kind of hike advertised as "easy" in this part of the world.

Of course this being France we passed two cafe's along the way so we stopped for lunch.

At the end of the hike - a view of the glacier!

... of course when we got back to town we realized you can see the same glacier from town - this is the view as we exited the parking garage (i.e. the very first thing we saw when we arrived).

We had dinner at a fancy schmancy place called Atmosphere, it was right beside the river.  (However due to the spring floods not so relaxing a place to dine!)

This is the view from outside the restaurant, shows how close we are to the river.  (Btw this is the river Arve, the same river that flows through Bonneville.  A bit narrower at this point.)

The second day we purchased a Multipass (explained here) which gave us access to the local gondola and train rides (as well as a few other things we didn't get around to).

First the gondola ride up to L'Aguille du Midi (next door to Mont Blanc itself).

We had to switch gondolas part way up, and eventually made it to the station at about 2300m.  (We didn't take the elevator up to the very top, at 3800m, not sure why I think the thin air was making me dizzy.)

Anyways the views were spectacular.

There were a lot of people hiking out in the snow, you can see a few below.  Crazy IMHO.

Another view of "our glacier".

We stopped and did a short hike at the midway point (where we changed gondolas) and had a rest by a mountain lake.

Afterwards we found the train which went to the other glacier.  The track is VERY STEEP, maybe a 10 or 12 degree incline.  You can see the middle rail, which has course teeth - the train has a giant gear which meshes with this third rail to allow the train to climb these steep grades.

The "other" glacier, I'm sure would have been more impressive about 50 years ago.  It's retreated all the way up the valley.

... and of course lunch ...

Afterwords we wandered over to the other side of town (there is maybe 20 minute walk between each of these attractions) and took a ski lift up the mountain.  (This side borders on Switzerland, whereas the Mont Blanc side borders on Italy.)  Again you can see "our glacier"!

This is where we saw some parachuters taking off, but no photos unfortunately.

This is the view on the way down.  There is a gondola going up the other side (to L'Aguille du Midi), not sure if you can make it out in the photo.

We're now doing a "rest day" in Bonneville (laundry, a bit of shopping and cramming some basic Italian) before we leave tomorrow for Casale Monferrato and Milan, a 4 or 5 day trip.