Les Houches

With 3 days to spare I decided to make a trip to the mountains, to the Alps no less. Proper mountains. And as it turned out a proper opportunity to put some pain into my legs.

Les Houches is about 6km from Chamonix- Mont Blanc, the centre of operations for the French side of the Val d’Arve, carved by glaciers to leave a grand valley between 2 chains of mountains. The head of these is Mont Blanc, at 4800m a smooth white dome among its craggy junior peaks.

The difficulty here is to choose a walk from among the numerous opportunities, difficult and easy along the valley. A great benefit is the free transport by bus or train along the valley, a smart move because without it I suspect the roads and towns would be clogged with cars.

Le Buet

For my first excursion I took the Mont Blanc Express to Le Buet, a very small village close to the Swiss frontier. There I took a relatively gentle walk to the Cascade de Bérard. After climbing above the cascade I was delighted to find a heavenly little café perched beside the head of the waterfall, named aptly, Cascade Café. My path took me further up the mountains where I encountered some very timid wild goats, so timid I cannot prove this with a photograph. They were wonderful beasts with large almost helical horns. The rest of the walk took me through beautiful forest before I emerged at the village of Le Lay just in time to beat a heavy rain shower.

Stunning cascade of water

Café Cascade

Good coffee too!

Bellevue and Glacier de Bionnassay

Due to the previous night’s thunderstorms the Teléphérique at Bellevue was not running. That seems to be no problem in this area. There are teléphériques everywhere so I took the adjacent one at La Prarion to a level of 1,800m to begin my walk there instead. But it did mean that I had a further 1 hour to walk, just to reach the start of my proposed circuit.

Bionassay Glacier

My initial destination was the Bionnassay glacier which I reached after about 90 mins hiking through a forest and then along a narrow path around the side of the mountain. When I arrived at the glacier it was almost disappointing – the glacier was about 400m away from the path. (the day before a waiter in Chamonix had told me how he used to be able to reach out and touch the glacier 20 years ago) There I met a party of Australians being taken on a guided walk from Les Contamines by their much younger Latvian guide. Their plan was to walk down to Les Houches so they had a tough afternoon ahead of them.

But as glaciers melt they create torrents of water and crossing these waterfalls proved to be the most spectacular part of the hike! The Passarelle Du Bionnassay was an exciting, springy little suspension bridge across the largest of the falls.

My path then took me down, down, down through the forest and across several waterfalls into the valley towards Chalère. In all I had made a 450 m descent. This included a scary moment when I fell from a ladder which I had foolishly negotiated facing the wrong way. Luckily nothing was broken and I was able to patch myself and wash the wound on my leg using the pure cold waters from a nearby waterfall.

Don’t do this!

The walk was always well signposted with frequent reminders of altitude

Another one of the many waterfalls from the glacier

At Petit Pont I stopped to refresh myself before ascending 450m back to Bellevue. This was a gruelling 90 minute climb as I was now under some time pressure to make the last Téléferique back down to Les Houches. Along the way I met several people walking down, each of whom uttered the encouraging words Il n’est pas loin (was the pain really that visible?).

The Chamonix area is truly spectacular. It was difficult to look at Mont Blanc without stopping to take yet another photograph – a yearning to take some of the beauty home with me. In summer it is a world of colour: clear blue skies, white capped mountains, craggy peaks, the foreboding grey of the glaciers, the sails of the hang gliders descending from Aiguille du Midi and Brévent, and the beautiful meadow flowers. It is hard to imagine this world under the cloak of winter wrapped in blanket of snow and ice.