March 16 - Arrival in Geneva, Switzerland

OK.  Now that I'm back home after the whirlwind tour of the French Alps, I will update the blog with a day by day account of the epic trip.

Jeff and I arrived in Geneva at 6:30am on Sunday, March 16th.  I did not have the best sleep on the plane but that's to be expected when you are trying to sleep in the early evening (there is a 7 hour time difference between Boulder and Geneva, so I basically arrived at 11:30pm according to my body clock).

Oh well.  The best thing to do upon arrival in Europe is just push on through and get on their schedule as best you can.  Mark and Tom were not to arrive until late that afternoon so Jeff and I decided to grab the rental car and GO SKI THE ALPS!!!!  We had originally thought we would not ski on this arrival day but the temptation, in the end, was just too great.

So, we chose to head to Samoens, a base area part of Le Grand Massif ski regime.  We chose a somewhat random address on my Garmin and it miraculously delivered us directly to a chairlift and a place to buy tickets.  The drive into France was exciting as you can imagine.  Enormous mountains began to emerge on the horizon in the early morning hours on that Sunday.  It was about an hour drive from the airport and the closer we got to the base of the ski area the more excited we became.

For a mere 43 euros (about $60), we bought our lift ticket for our first day skiing in the Alps.  It was a perfectly sunny day with temps heading into the 40s.  It would be the first of six days in a row of gorgeous sunny days with spring conditions.

After buying our ticket in our jet lagged stupor, we changed into ski clothes in the parking lot, a not insignificant feat.  By 10am or so, we were skiing.  Our first turns from the parking lot were downhill to a high speed mega-lift (a 6-pack I think).  The first turns were on perfect corn snow with a decent pitch and at that moment I knew we were in for a good solid day of skiing.

Here we are before this first run:

As we arrived at the top of our first lift ride, these were the views that hit us in the head like a ton of bricks.  Speechless.

We spent the morning exploring the vast terrain at Samoens and Flaine, the other ski area that is part of Le Grand Massif.  It had not snowed in a couple weeks or so and the off-piste was firm.  The main runs, however, had great spring conditions albeit a bit crowded at times (look closely at the bottom of the photo two above this note to get an idea of the density on the main trails at times).

There are many kinds of lifts in Europe and here are two new ones for me:

On the lift above, you walked onto the lift from behind and the white doors closed behind you.  To get off, you stepped backwards of the platform.  It was odd but it worked just fine.

Here is another first - a chairlift that seats EIGHT people!!

After a fun first day of just getting our legs under us and enjoying the immensity of the mountain vistas, we drove back to Geneva to pick up Mark and Tom at the airport.

Next, it was onto Megeve where we would ski on Monday.  Here are a couple views along our drive to Megeve as the sun was beginning to set:

View of Aiguille du Midi, Chamonix 

View of Glacier on Flanks of Mont Blanc 

Ridgeline near Mont Blanc