Base Jumping

On Valentines weekend, before all the regular university classes got started, three of the other “todo el años” (BC kids who are here all year), and I took off for a long weekend in the Alps. We flew into Geneva early that Thursday morning, and got a shuttle transfer to Chamonix, France, a little town in Haute-Savoie made popular (and touristy) by the 1924 winter Olympics.

We didn’t arrive in time to get any skiing in the first day but were happy to leisurely take in our picturesque surroundings anyways. Tucked into the mountains of the Chamonix Valley, at the foot Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps, the town offered an amazing view in any direction that you could turn your head. It was the first time any of us had been skiing outside North America and we could hardly believe that we would be up there skiing those colossal white and silver mountains the next day.

As if the panorama alone didn’t have us pumped up enough, when we passed though the center of town the town, excitement, and the sweet smell of vin chaud, were in the air. A 50-50 mix of British tourists and French were congregating around a big screen playing action footage shot the previous days. It turned out that Chamonix was hosting the first annual Nissan Winter Games and the town was buzzing with anticipation of the weekend’s big events.

The sun was shining and everything was perfect. Our only worry was our hostel. We should have been prepared for it, because what can you expect for 12 euros a night? But it was pretty hard to hide our disappointment when loopy Veronique showed us to our room. The odor of sweaty boot kicked us in the face when she opened the door. It was a 12 person dorm room. Apparently, our roommates had been living there a while. Large scale avalanches of dirty stinky laundry had flowed into the crevasses between each bed. I was grateful for the Rick Steve’s™ sleep sack Mom gave me for Christmas when I saw the bare, stained mattresses. And with the top secret key hiding place on top of the pipe outside the door, I didn’t feel very good about leaving valuables in the room. But we were so tired that first night none of it mattered.

The first day on the slopes went above and beyond our expectations. The snow was perfect, the weather was beautiful, and there were no lift lines. We spent the day at the area nearest our hostel. The south facing slopes of Brévent-Flégère area had an awesome view of Mont Blanc, nice soft snow, and a good range of trails for an easy first day.

The second day was even better. We headed over to the larger Grands Montets area where there were more challenging trails. The best part was our first run from the gondola that drops off at 3000m elevation. Beyond the village bellow all we could see was snow capped mountains. We were standing on top of the world. Although the Alps are so unlike any mountain I had ever seen, that it felt more like standing on top of the moon or mars. I was amazed by how open and snowy the Alps really are. There were almost no trees at all! And I couldn’t believe how much warmer it was than the usual New England ski weather. When my hostel-mates told me to wear only a t-shirt under my jacket the first morning, I assumed they were just playing a joke on the new kids, and reluctantly peeled off only two of my usual 5 layers. I wish I had trusted them because I was sweating all day.

It was already our last day, so we skied/rode hard all morning, took a relaxing lunch on the deck of a slope-side lodge, and strapped our boards back on for a few more runs in the afternoon.

We were sad to see the evening fog rolling in. And actually took off our boards and tried to run to the lift that would take us highest just so we could fit in the longest last run possible. We didn’t make it but on the way down we ran into our hostel-mates and joined them for a hot chocolate at the base. Believe it or not this made up for missing our last run.

Despite its sketchy appearance the hostel ended up being a highlight of our stay. It had a great location right next to the Brévent cable car, and the slobs who were staying there were actually really cool. There were four ski bums who had been crashing at that dump of a hostel for at least a month. One was a guy from Oregon who was taking a year off from Oregon State to see the world and had stopped for a ski week in Chamonix. When the week was up, he packed his bag, went down to the bus stop, waited for the bus to come, and go, and hiked it back up the hill turning his week in the mountains into an almost two month long stay. Another guy was from New Zealand. He had made the 23 hour journey to Europe more than a year ago and had no real life plan other than to do whatever he feels like when he wakes up in the morning. He does that until his money runs, at which point he gets a job until he has enough to do more of whatever, wherever, he wants. For the past three months all he had wanted to do was snowboard in Chamonix. There was a girl from Scotland, who had been living in the room all season too. She was another ski bum who had just gotten a job teaching nearly impossible to understand English in a town nearby. The fourth permanent resident of the dorm room was a mysterious French guy who would come back in the middle of the night, and leave quietly the next morning. . Even though he had been there for weeks no one had ever spoken to him. Around 7 every night everyone would go down to the kitchen and make some dinner on the grungy hot plates and hang out for hours so we got to know some of the guests from other rooms too. Surprisingly there were a good number of grownups staying in that slum too, on both long and short term stays, like a sunburned guy from Alaska who never does anything but ski, and some British guys trying to escape mid life crises for a weekend. We also met three Spaniards who were studying abroad in Paris and taught us a Spanish card game called Burro that I lost in everytime. Everyone there was so friendly and laidback that it was hard to resist their convincing arguments that we should just catch another flight back in a day, a week, or maybe a month or so.

To make it even harder to leave that winter wonderland, on our last night we walked down to the center to try the famous cheese fondue and raclette and stop to watch the results of the film and photo competition on the big screen. Seven teams of athletes and photographers were given five days to prepare a short film combining mountaineering, skiing, snowboarding, paragliding, and B.A.S.E jumping. A team called Ride the Planets won with an incredible film showing some truly talented athletes completely rewrite the laws of physics. I was totally in awe of the death defying “birdmen” or “wingsuiters” who are basically human flying squirrels. I attached a link to the winning video below. It’s really cool, check it out.

http://winter.outdoorgames.org/en/gallery/video.php?idIndex=181&idContent=4529&a=1&b=0&noeud=6

So, With two great days of skiing behind us, I very reluctantly left Chamonix Sunday morning but only with the promise to drop out of school after this year, move to the Alps and become a professional birdwoman. Just kidding. Sort of. We spent our last day in Geneva sightseeing.

We saw the Catherdral where John Calvin preached, the big lake, a 200 meter tall squirt of water, Jean Jacques Rousseau’s house, and best of all I ate frog legs! They were delicious.

Geneva was really pretty but also freezing cold, we had about five cups of hot chocolate (even better than Swiss Miss). But when we couldn’t take anymore cold we broke down and went to a horrible British movie about the corruption of day worker hire agencies called “It’s a Free World” just to have somewhere warm to go until it was time to check in for a luxurious night sleeping on the airport floor which, after the hostel, seemed like a clean thing to do. We got back just in time to barely miss our first classes. But wingsuitters don't need to go to class, so it really doesn't matter.