Chamonix

Chamonix is a beautiful little French mountain town just an hour's drive from Geneva airport, which is in turn just an hour and 15 minutes from London City airport.

Although it is so close to Geneva airport, it is nestled at the foot of the tallest mountain in the Alps, Mont Blanc. The valley walls rise up over 3000 metres either side of the town:

I went with Padraig and Jeff who were both snowboarders:

The weather was beautiful down in the valley - warm and sunny, but we were a bit unlucky with the conditions: Although there had been lots of snow earlier in March, the weather turned very warm and a lot of it melted (there was no snow left at all in the valley which is comparitively low at 1000m). What was left was very icy in the morning, or slushy in the afternoon.

It could have been worse though - earlier in the week there had been quite a lot of snow which was present at altitude, and this is where we found some decent skiing - by going "off piste" at the top of Les Grande Montets:

Clips

OffPiste1.mpg - Here's a clip I took at the start of one of our off piste expeditions

OffPiste2.mpg - me sounding a little chastened after spending 30 minutes hiking up to retrieve my ski and put it back on ;-).