A view of the Aiguille des Grands Montets.

Argentiere Glacier

Our first couple days Bernie, our guide, wanted to feel out the group and get us used to riding in glacier conditions. So, we headed up the lift at Les Grand Montets, the largest of the traditional ski resorts at Chamonix. Although there are a lot of ways down the mountain, we mostly came down the route to the far skiers' right over Argentiere Glacier.

This was beautiful riding over all kinds of terrain. As you can see, it was mostly a beautiful week -- lucky for us! Below is some of the incredible scenery around the Grands Montets resort.

Below: a view of the pinnacle of rock known as the Aiguille Vert, a daring climbing destination.

The wind pushing up over the alps gave us a beautiful example of cloud formation in action. This phenomenon persisted for a couple days.

Glacier = "river of ice"

Meet Bernie

Oren hooked up with Bernie through some snowboarding lists he's active on. Bernie is German originally, and has been living in Chamonix and guiding for thirteen years. He rode with us all week, and provided endless information about the valley, the people, the glaciers... and peppered with a teutonic sense of humor as well.

I really can't recommend hiring a guide in Chamonix to explore the Vallée Blanche highly enough. Even when riding the lift-served terrain here on the Argentiere Glacier it's better to have a local with the group at all times. Unless your group is very small the extra expense for a guide will be more than paid back in a better time!

The licensed guides in the Chamonix valley are known as "Guides de Montagne". For more information on guides, check out the official Chamonix website at www.chamonix.com. Bernie can be reached at <where was it>.

Below: a contrail pointing at Justine, with Oren in the foreground.

Ice calving on Argentiere Glacier. To get an idea of how big these are, check the zoomed-out photo below.

The Lenticular Cloud

Another great Chamonix phenomenon was this perfect lenticular (lens-shaped) cloud just to the skier's right as we came down the Argentiere glacier.

It was there for days, the result of a standing pressure wave coming up off the Alps below. It almost always had this perfect shape, even though it was thousands of feet above the mountain that caused it's formation. It was visible from all over the Chamonix valley the week we were there -- see some of our Vallée Blanche pictures.

The Crack of Doom

In navigating down the glacier, we found ourselves threading through icefalls like the one at left. One place we went through quite a few times during the week because of the beautiful snowfields below it was a traverse above a crevasse between two giant ice blocks. We nicknamed it the "Crack of Doom" because, really, it was best not to fall while right in the middle.

At right: I'm dropping in. Bernie almost always went last.