Christmas in Chamonix

Back in September Cindy received an email from her former boss and fellow TI employee Cynthia inviting us to spend Christmas with them. Cynthia, her husband Greg, and their 21 year old son Jordan were planning to visit Europe over a two week period. Cynthia and Greg are expat professionals and native Texans. Almost three years ago they went on their first assignment to Malaysia. Even before that term was over Cynthia was asked to "save the day" due to a TI personnel issue India. So this 5'2" red haired woman became the Finance Director for TI in Bangalore India. Their son Jordan is a senior at Tulane University in New Orleans. Greg has spent weeks and months back in the US trying to get Visa stuff worked out for him to get to India with his wife. Only a few days after Greg finally made it to India they flew to Munich around December 14th and spent time touring Bavaria. On December 21st all of us converged on the ski town of Charmonix. It is a little town in France about fifty miles southeast of Geneva. It was home to the very first Winter Olympics in 1924. The mountain range separates France from Switzerland to the north and Italy to the south.

The Ferguson Four piled into our VW Passat hatchback and drove there. The route from Munich is southwest through Bavaria, through Austria for about 15 kilometers, all the way across Switzerland north to south, and a few kilometers into France via a mountain road. We ran into traffic problems in Switzerland. We decided to exit the autobahn and try to bypass the backup on side roads. It worked rather well for a while, then we tried to get back on. Even with GPS guidance we had a hard time finding a way back on the autobahn that was not backed up due to the traffic. Eventually we took our medicine and waited for our turn. It ended up taking over seven hours to get there.

The chalet that we rented for the week was a little disappointing. It turns out this was not the typical lease chalet. This one has a family that lives there 50 weeks out of the year and they only lease it out over the two weeks between Christmas and New Years. It was a weird place with out of date decor, worn out furniture, and short doorways. The area downstairs had a section we referred to as the Hobbit area. You had to walk up three steps to pass through a four foot tall opening. Once you were through the opening it had normal ceilings with two bedrooms and a full bath. The place had no internet access and no phone, but had a wide variety of VHS tapes to choose from. Anything from Top Gun to forty year old rugby matches, on VHS. I could not remember the last time I even saw a VCR. It was several days into the stay before we figured out the had UK Sky satellite service, which meant programming in English! It was nice to have in the evenings towards the end of our stay.

There were some nice aspects of our arrival. The property management company had a person there waiting to let us in as we drove up. He was British, so we understood him easily. He explained the house rules and had a packet of info for us. I had ordered our lift tickets and ski rentals prior to our arrival. He delivered our lift passes to us in our packet and explained that the rental equipment would be delivered to our chalet. Sure enough around 7 PM they showed up with our boots and skis. It was great that we did not have to get back out in the dark to find the rental shop. We got to stay in the comfort of the chalet to try on everything and make sure that it was going to work. The boots they brought for me were too small. A few minutes later he was back with new boots that fit. At the end of our stay they showed up to pick everything up too. That was so great.

We arrived before Cynthia's family that Saturday night. We knew the ski delivery was coming but we wanted to grab some dinner. One redeeming quality of this house was location, location, location. We were able to walk to many restaurants and other popular areas of town. On this night we walked towards an area that showed to have several restaurants according to Google Maps. Our route took us right past a McDonald's. We caved in to the kid's request and allowed them to have McDonald's, but Cindy and I held out for some pizza at a local place in town. We ordered it to go and took everything back to the chalet to wait for the rest of our group and the rental equipment. As we were walking back a van pulled up beside us and stopped, it was Cynthia Greg and Jordan. They were having trouble finding the place so we guided them back. They traveled from Nuremburg via three trains to Geneva, then took a van into town. We shared the pizza and wound down the evening after a long day of travel for everyone.

The next morning was Sunday. The Ferguson's had skis and lift tickets so we were ready to go skiing. The others decided to take it easy that morning and eventually get rentals and lift passes later. Our group headed to the Les Houches ski area. Chamonix has several ski areas included with the pass that we purchased. Les Houches is a place considered "up the valley" and is in a lower elevation area. The whole valley was hurting for snow. This late into the season they normally have a deep base of snow. This year not so much. Many of the areas were closed or partially open. This area looked to have a large portion open that consisted of blue pistes that were suitable for us to get our ski legs back. Remember that greens are easy "bunny slopes", blue indicates the next level of difficulty, red is intermediate, and black is the most difficult. We are convinced these are just guidelines. Many of the blue pistes, on the same run, have sections that are very flat, then steep, then steep with moguls, then flat again. They often cross red pistes and the terrain looks the same. The Les Houches area was okay. It would have been nice to have a map of the lifts and pistes, but such a thing does not exist on the mountain. We did not have a pocket map for any of the areas that we skied all week. They are also rather poorly marked. We parked the car near the gondola and rode up. We soon realized that the result of the closed areas meant us not being able to get back to the same gondola at the end of the day. The bottom section was closed off due to lack of snow.

The town of Chamonix is below in these two pics.   

 The two pics above and the one below include the largest mountain in the area, Mont Blanc.

When we stopped for lunch on day one it was so warm that we found a table outside and took our jackets off to cool down. It was great weather and we found enough snow to get a lot of skiing in on the first day. We decided to make our way down the mountain around 4 PM, since we were not sure exactly how we would get back to our car. We rode the other gondola back down and walked up to a bus stop. There was a bus there so we asked the driver how we get back to the other side of town. He told us to get on the 17 bus, which was pulling up at the time. Sure enough, one stop later we were back at the car.

That night Greg and Jordan cooked some potato soup with some fresh green beans. We all sat together and enjoyed the dinner with the German beer that we imported to France.

That evening Cynthia told us that she was talking to a lady in town who recommended that we ride up the Aiguille de Midi on Monday morning. It was supposed to be a clear day. I was personally not that excited about it. It was a gondola that took you to the top of a mountain for a view, no skiing, at least not for us. Well, I was wrong, this was an awesome experience. Monday morning it was foggy, I was doubting that we would be able to see anything. However, the fog burned off very quickly and it was a bright sunny day. We walked to the gondola from our house and started the accent.

So here is the thing about our skiing experience in Europe so far. In most cases you cannot see the ski area from the valley. You have to ride a gondola to the top of the first mountain next to the valley, then there are larger mountains back behind which are the actual skiing areas. Out of the eight skiing area defined in the Chamonix valley you can only see two of them from the valley. I thought this was an interesting observation, and very different from Colorado and New Mexico skiing.

Here is a map of the valley listing all of the ski areas and other areas of interest referenced in this post.

The Aiguille de Midi was a similar situation, from the valley you cannot tell where you are going to end up. There was a large gondola that took you to the top of the first peak from the valley, you exit and immediately get on a second gondola to accent to the top of the next larger peak behind it. It turns out that you can see the building and tower at this second peak because it is so high. Look at the picture below, way up at the peak in the distance you can make out a very small structure. That is where we went, 3842 meters (12,605 feet). I had not noticed the structure from the valley until after we had been up there. 

This is the view from the midpoint area between gondolas. 

The above pic was the start of the second leg. We have a full size version of the pic that we zoomed in to, you cannot tell where the gondola wires go. I rode the stupid thing and I don't understand how it gets to the top. This is not the most comfortable situation that I can think of. In a gondola suspended several hundred meters above sheer rock cliffs with fifty other people. It is amazing how quiet it gets when that many people are together wondering if we are going to make it to the top.

There were a few people with ski boots and skis going up with us. These are the nutty folks pictured above skiing off of this unmarked out of bounds area. After seeing this terrain in person, all I can say is that I hope they made it down in good shape. There was a lot of snow in this area, but I sure did not see a good way down that didn't include rocks and cliffs. 

This is a picture at the end point of the gondola. You can see the skiers again at the bottom. There is another structure above this vantage point.

The gondola takes you to the building pictured below, perched on top of this rock formation. In the middle you can see people standing on a bridge. Again, this is a very unsteady area if you have any fear of heights. The wind is whipping and snow is blowing all around. The digital signage indicated the wind was blowing at over 100 kilometers per hour at this height. We had a little bit of a shielding with the structure. You cross the bridge to get into a cave area that has an elevator going to the top section where the tower is located. The elevator shaft is literally a rock tunnel going up. Cindy opted to stay in the semi-comfort of the cave area while I took the kids to the top. I am not usually bothered much by heights, but in this case I was a little on edge and uneasy. I was putting on a brave face for the kids. Katherine went back and forth but finally decided to go up. 

Above is a panoramic from one side showing the valley below. I liked the pic below showing the shadow of the mountain range covering the town. David was waving his hands in an attempt to see his shadow across the valley. I am not sure he appreciated the scale and magnitude of what he was seeing.



There were several little tunnels that allowed you to move around and see from all sides.



There was also a clear box that you could walk into to further test your fear of heights. David and I walked into it for a few seconds. They did not allow cameras in the area and you had to put slippers over your shoes before walking into it. I suppose to prevent it from getting scratched up. This was not the funnest thing that I ever did. This is not my picture, but it is a pretty good representation of the experience. Katherine did not even want to look at the box.

It is a surprisingly large area and we did get separated from our group. Cindy was ready to get off of this mountain, and I had enough too. We took the gondola down and waited for the rest of our group on solid flat valley ground.

As we waited we found a couple of things in the gift shop. As usual the kids talked us into buying them stuffed animals. Outside I wanted to get a pic of the building and sign. There were these two uummm..... ladies there taking pics too. We waited for them to get their picture and move on, and waited, and waited as they took pic after pic. Each time they would both look at it to see how it turned out, then take another one. It was clear to me they understood we were waiting for them to move, but for whatever reason they didn't care. They stood there chatting and taking the same picture over and over again. I was able to hold it together for a while. Only when they turned around and started taking the picture going the other direction did I lose it. See behind the uummmm.... lady in the black jacket was about 100 feet of empty parking lot. Moving 30 feet in that direction would not have changed the picture in any way. It was the town behind them, the rest of the valley and the mountains on the other side. It was very unlikely they understood me, but I decided to share these thoughts with them in a very impolite manner. They pretty much ignored my suggestion and eventually decided to move on their own. Luckily we were still waiting on the rest of our group or I would have gone completely insane.

We ate lunch with our group across the street then headed back to the chalet to get our ski stuff. It was going to be a short afternoon of skiing so we headed to another lower elevation small area known as Les Planards. It consists of two short bunny slopes, one 4 person chair lift, one intermediate red, and one long blue piste. The plan was that I would take Cindy and then kids, then return to pick up Greg and Jordan. That did not work out so well. It was such a nice day that everyone was out and about, and all of them it seemed wanted to go to Les Planards. Pulling into the parking lot was my first mistake. We were stuck for 20 minutes in line to get into the parking area. It was already late, and the kids were itching to ski. Getting out of the lot was going to take another 20 minutes. Cindy called to notify the others that it would be faster for them to take a bus. We finally wedged the car into a small parking spot on top of a slick piece of ice. Getting boots on and skis out was a challenge, but we managed. It was a beautiful afternoon so we had to get a little skiing in.

The only reason we were able to ski in this lower valley area is due to the 50+ snow making cannons they have. It was about 42 degrees with a bright sun shining.

The right side was being used for training by a ski team, the left was the main area where the blue and red converged to the bottom of the chair lift.

The blue was a nice long run that we did over and over again. David and I did the red run, his first intermediate run ever. He did great.

That evening after skiing I went to the grocery store with Greg and Jordan to get food for the rest of the week. Big mistake, HUGE. Every person in the village was at this store. This was not Target with brightly lit wide aisles. I have never been pushed around by so many old French ladies trying to get their milk and eggs. After this trip we decided to eat out or manage in some other way, no more grocery store visits.

Cynthia was not skiing this week. She had been checking out the town all day. Luckily she had bought some roasted chicken and potatoes for us to eat for dinner that night.  

Tuesday December 24th, Christmas Eve. 
Skiing conditions had worsened by Tuesday. Warm sunshine from the days before combined with a breezy day resulted in many of the ski areas to be shut down all together. We waited until 10 AM to get the final report and decided to head to the Brevant Flegere ski area. It was a short drive to get to the lift area on the far side of Chamonix from our chalet.

It turned out to be a good day of skiing. It was windy at times, but we found good snow and skied until they shut down the lifts. It was when we returned to the house that evening that the drama began. Fergie the Elf had made the trip to France and was doing his thing, moving around the house each day. He made one big mistake though. He decided to camp out next to the kitchen sink, where Ms. Cynthia picked him up with Katherine and David watching. Alas, Fergie the Elf had lost his magic. Katherine was visibly upset and David was watching attentively to see how we handled this one. Mommy was able to reach one of the other elves at the North Pole on her cell phone. The Elf was a little put out that we were calling on Christmas Eve, but assured us he would relay a message to Santa to help out Fergie. We headed to dinner with the assurance that within a couple of hours Fergie would be okay.

Dinner was just the Ferguson Four. We found a great restaurant that had fondue. In this case it was a hot stone that you cooked your meat on. David and Katherine really enjoyed the process and the food.

By the time dinner was over we returned to find a message on Cindy's tablet from Fergie. He explained that by Ms. Cynthia touching him, taking away his magic, that enabled a special opportunity for David and Katherine to pick up Fergie and give him a big hug goodbye. This was in fact Christmas Eve, and the last day Fergie is here. It was a perfect time to get to say goodbye. It was interesting seeing the kids react to this news. They were very hesitant to touch him, even after much encouragement by Mom and Dad. We finally convinced David to take the lead as the big brother. He carefully picked up Fergie and rubbed him on his cheek. They took turns telling Fergie goodbye and sat him back down. As this was happening all I could think about was a comment to an article that I read online about the whole Elf on the Shelf thing. The comment simply said, "Wow, what an elaborate way to LIE to your children." The elf is certainly not a required thing to celebrate Christmas and I could honestly do without the pressure of coming up with things for him to do day after day. But I think the kids enjoy it and it is cool to see them react when Fergie moves into a room that all of us are sitting in. This worked out okay and is a good memory. The rest of the letter from Fergie mentioned that Mommy and Daddy had a Christmas Eve gift for the kids. They had forgotten about this part after worrying so much about touching Fergie. We reminded them and told them where to go to find it. 

Both of them had footy pajamas on their Christmas wish list. Cindy comments that even after five years of getting pajamas for their Christmas Eve gift every year, they still don't realize what it is going to be each year, it is still a surprise to them.

That night we kept another family tradition and pulled up the Santa NORAD tracker on my phone, since it was our only internet access. Once Santa reached Poland, David, for the first time in his life, was asking to go to bed so Santa can make his deliveries.

Christmas Day
The timing could not have been better. Christmas day fell on a Wednesday, after three straight days of skiing, and the weather started to get bad with rain/snow in the forecast. It turned out to be a nice restful day at the chalet. Santa brought some more footy pajamas and roller blades for the kids, along with other goodies. We had already opened presents from Mommy and Daddy so that Daddy would not have to figure out how to haul them to France along with eight days of cloths, ski cloths, helmets, etc. Cynthia had brought the kids a Barbie from India for Katherine, and a shirt for David, also from India.

Late that afternoon, after being inside all day, I convinced the kids to take a walk to see if the bowling alley/mini golf place was open. Sure enough it was. The bowling lanes were on a wait but they got to play some mini golf. 

That evening for dinner Greg cooked a yummy beef stew type thing with carrots and mashed potatoes. It was a warm hearty meal for a cold Christmas day.

Thursday December 26th
The rain moved in last night and turned into snow. By Thursday morning the car was completely covered in a foot of snow. We took it easy in the morning and waited for the reports on the ski areas. We decided that we wanted to ski for a couple of hours this morning then head to the sports complex where there was indoor swimming and an ice skating rink. It was still snowing and Cindy wanted to spend some time with Cynthia since she had been going hard with the kids all week. She took a few pictures of the landscape that had been transformed from the day before.

I gave the kids an option to go to a new ski area that we have not seen yet up the mountain, or go back to Les Planards. They both agreed to go with the place that was familiar, and guaranteed to be fun. I for one was glad they made that decision. It was snowing so hard it made it difficult to see, plus fog was moving in just a few meters up on the mountain. We skied hard and fast. In a very short time we managed to get seven runs in, including Katherine doing her first intermediate run. Two hours later I was soaking wet and the kids were voluntarily done with skiing for the day. We returned to the house for a warm lunch and to warm up. Later that afternoon we made the trek to the sports complex. I had put our swim suits in a backpack, but proceeded to leave the backpack behind, only realizing I had done so once we arrived one kilometer+ down the road, in the snow, uphill both directions....... This turned out to be a blessing, at least for me. For some reason this place requires tight speedo style swim wear. You are not allowed to wear traditional American swim trunks. Thankfully the kids were okay with the fact that I forgot the backpack and we moved on to the indoor ice skating rink. But not before a snow angel or two got their wings........

Ice skating was fun. I did better than I thought I would and they had a little helper thing that Katherine used to help her stay on her feet. That was awesome, since my back would have been killing me had I needed to bend over to hold her up. Cindy met up with us and took over skating with Katherine, my feet were done after 90 minutes of skating. We stayed until they closed, and it was a mad rush to turn in the skates. When they give you the rental skates, they take your shoes, I suppose to make sure you return the skates. Cindy had done a little shopping and had handed over her purse and shopping bag for safe keeping. When the little French dude gave her the shoes, she asked for her purse and bag. He shook his head as though he understood and proceeded to return shoes for the next person. Cindy again repeated, I need my purse and bag. Again, he acknowledged, but quickly moved on to the next person. This happened about three more times until Cindy spotted her stuff on a shelf and sternly requested him to bring her "that stuff, RIGHT THERE". We had a nice walk home and stopped for dinner along the way. This time dinner was a little disappointing, but still fun. At the end of the day it was still snowing, with so much snow on the ground a short lived snowball fight on the way home was inevitable. As you might imagine, David got carried away, Katherine cried, and Daddy ended with with a two armed ten pound ball of powder landing on David's head as retaliation for hitting his sister in the face.

Friday December 27th
The lift passes that we purchased included the option of skiing Courmeyuer in Italy. To get there it was a thirty minute drive that included passing through the Mont Blanc tunnel, a road that goes right through the mountain into Italy. That morning we got our ski stuff and headed out. As we came to the entrance of the tunnel there was a toll booth. We had already purchased our vignette stickers to drive in Austria and Switzerland, but we still had to pay for this tunnel going from France to Italy. Cindy and I have this routine down, she grabs some coins and has them ready once we get the amount due. She had the 1, 2, and .50 Euro coins ready to go. We pull up to the window, they ask if we are going one way or if we need to return within seven days. I told them we are returning that day. He says okay, that will be 51 Euros!!! We put away the coinage and got out the paper money. The tunnel itself is a one lane road in either direction. They regulate the traffic by only allowing one car every fifteen seconds or so. After you pay the toll, the gate does not rise until it is your turn to go.

We made it through the tunnel and got into the town. It was a dramatic change from one side to the other. As we entered the tunnel it was shaded and dark, on the Italian side the sun was blinding. It was very busy and we had a hard time driving to the ski lift, once there it was even more difficult to park. We found our way to a underground garage and paid our 6 euros to park there. We had to drive down three levels to finally find a spot. Now we had to walk up three flight with ski boots and skis, across the main parking area right into the gondola line. Finally we have made it..........except........our lift passes are not working. The assumption is that we have to go to the window to get them authorized to work here. The problem is that all four lanes of the ticket window are backed up 50 people deep. It was a bright sunny day with lots of fresh powder on the ground. After two days of snow people were ready to be outside skiing. We did have to stand in that line, and 40 minutes later it took the lady all of 20 seconds to authorize our passes to work there. This is beginning to not be fun, Cindy and I are starting to think that no skiing is worth this.

Now we wait for the huge 100+ person gondola that takes you to the slopes. They cram so many people in there you can't move. Finally we made it to the mountain, we get to put on our skis..........and ski 30 meters to the chair lift that takes you to the actual pistes. By the way, the line is full of all the people that just got off the huge gondola, plus the people that skied down the mountain. There was no real line to speak of, just mass chaos to try and get through one of the four lift pass gates. Whoever pushes the most gets on the lift. We rode the lift to the top of the mountain. I reluctantly skied down knowing that I was in for another long lift line and possibly a fight. We made the best of the long run and had fun going down the mountain. Like the other ski areas, this also had very hard sections and somewhat easy sections on what was considered a blue. This place actually has moguls on most of the area. These look like natural moguls due to usage of the slopes without grooming. When we got to the bottom there was an area that resembled a very small town. There was about a dozen buildings and about a billion people. The piste ended and you had to pole through this area, a very long ways, to get to the lift again. We all managed to get through it and were pleasantly surprised that the line was not long. The next time down that run we figured out a route that bypassed most of the "town" area and right into the lift line. The rest of the day was really great. The kids were ready for a challenge and wanted to test themselves on some red runs. They handled them like champs. Cindy and I had some tired dogs by the time we got to the end of those really long red runs. The legs, they were a burnin'.

As beautiful as the France side of the Alps is, we think Italy was even more picturesque. This place was incredible.

These two pictures above and below were taken at lunch. We tried a place further down the mountain. When we attempted to go in to get food the door was blocked. It was another chaotic no line situation full of hungry people. As destiny would have it, once we got on the path to that restaurant we were forced to either climb back up the hill or continue down this narrow path to who knows where. When I am skiing I never like to climb uphill, so down the hill we went until we came across this two person chair lift. That lift took us further up the mountain to this beautiful area. We had no lines and an unbelievably yummy ham and swiss pannini along with some other junk food and cafe au lait. I had stopped drinking coffee and all other caffeine until this trip. I have now discovered cafe au lait, and I like it.

The kids are funny about magic carpet lifts and button lifts. They have to do it every time they see one. The bunny slope is no fun for them, but the ride up is a must do. I just waited at the bottom and rested.

More pictures from Courmayeur while we skied for the rest of the day. As you might anticipate, the bright sun in the morning leads to shadows in the afternoon on this side of the mountain. Skiing became difficult as the shadows darkened and the snow thinned out on this beautiful warm day.

At 4:45 we tried to fit in one more run but they had closed the lift. It was a rough beginning to the day and we were close to our breaking point of tolerance. In the end the day was a huge success and well worth keeping our eye on the prize. We crammed back in to the gondola, got back in the car to head back across the tunnel. As we approached the tunnel the signs indicated heavy traffic. We thought this was weird since they controlled how many cars go in. We soon learned the signs were talking about the traffic to get into the tunnel. It was heavy traffic that translated to about a 30 minute wait to get to the gate. Unlike the ski lift chaos, this actually had lanes and everyone was on their best behavior by staying in their lane and waiting their turn.

Once we made it through it was smooth sailing the rest of the way. That night we had dinner with our house mates out on the town.

The next morning it was time to load up and head back to Germany. I had to wake up the kids in order to get us checked out by the 10 AM deadline. Above is the result of seven busy days in Chamonix over Christmas.

Above is a short video of some of the skiing. The kids got so good by the end of the trip we had to work hard just to keep up. There was no more filming while skiing.

The drive home was pretty uneventful. We ran into a little bit of traffic, but managed to make it back in 6 hours and 15 minutes. We had the stamina to get everything unpacked and the kids even helped sort the mountain of cloths for laundry.

Overall the trip was a huge success and very memorable. I am so glad that Cynthia thought to invite us along, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. I think we made the most of it too. I am tired, and I am out.

Happy New Year to everyone.