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.