Activity Reviews in Chamonix

This week we have a bonus report from our Verbinet.com reporter, Lee Fieldsend, who decamped to Chamonix for a spot of ice climbing…

Back To School

I may be stating the obvious here, as it is the beginning of October after all, but autumn has arrived here in Chamonix. Crisp blue skies, a chill in the air and people suddenly wearing coats & scarves rather than shorts & flip-flops. Most noticeable of all is the changing colour of the leaves. Being tucked down in a winding valley, Chamonix is surrounded every way you look by tree-covered mountains and right now they look amazing. Dotted in amongst the various green shades of pines & firs are the shocking bursts of orange, red and yellow of the deciduous trees as they turn

We have had what seems a little more like inter-season weather conditions, with a little bit of everything passing through the valley. Right now its crazy hot weather reminding us of the height of summer, although there has been some heavy rain storms in the afternoon/early evening which have been cooling down the air temperature so you realise it's not quite mid-summer yet.

It has been beautiful in Chamonix over the last ten days or so, hot and sunny in the day time and warm clear evenings that just beg you to take the weight off your feet with a glass or two of rosé. However, determined to make the most of the good weather, this weekend saw the official unveiling of the mountain bikes for the summer. Bit dusty, in need of a little WD40 here and there (that was us, not just the bikes!) we set off for a nice leisurely ride on Saturday with some more novice biking friends and a hearty picnic.

After much anticipation, the lifts at Le Tour, Flegere and Brevent are finally open for the summer, a big hoorah to that! Add in a spell of incredibly good weather and you have the recipe for a great weekend, so a couple of us headed up with mountain bikes, full face helemts and all the armour to Le Tour to check out what the trails were like after a season of heavy snow.

One of the nicest ways to enjoy Chamonix is to pack a picnic and head out into the mountains.

The weather here in Chamonix has taken a very mixed turn again with the snow returning to some of the higher areas in the valley and a fair amount of rain passing through, but mostly in the evenings, so the mornings have been fairly dry and in some cases quite sunny. All in all the days have become much cooler, bringing it with it the necessity to hang the shorts up and bring out the jumpers!

After having a few days of inclement weather at the end of last week, dominated by some colder winds and prolonged cloud build up, we seem to have landed back quite nicely into some high pressure bringing cloud free skies and roasting temperatures. Afternoon highs are approaching 32 or 33 degrees, but there is just enough of a North Westerly breeze to make conditions slightly more bearable. Driving back through Sallanches on Saturday at 7.45pm, a thermometer in the main town was still showing 28 degrees. This relentless heat inevitably brings with it the odd (some would argue welcome) storm. And it looks like we shall be getting this mid afternoon Thursday and possibly some more prolonged and heavier thunderstorms on Friday and Saturday. The outlook remains slightly unstable until the beginning of next week.

Well the good news is that the Winter season has already started, the bad new is that it is July and it should be hot and sunny!! Following weeks of blistering heatwave we have been plunged into a week of rain and storms with temparatures stuggling to hit the 18C mark.