Snoballz Report: Chamonix, Aug. 30

No flying today. High clouds heading south with waves in them came lower, I guess, and messed everything up after morning raininess down low.

Bought a serious ski jacket-- for 29 euro. The ultras are gone. Also got some glove liners and expedition quality socks. I then immediately put them to very good use.

We all went up the highest gondola in the world, basically following Mad Dog. It was spectacular. I kept saying "wow!". It was very foggy and the precipitous drop-offs went into cloudy nothingness.

Just after disembarking at the top, we walked across a bridge surrounded by fog and then into caves. Sharky and I found some beers, cold of course, and then proceeded to view points surrounded by that spectacular cloudy nothingness, with momentary breaks in the clouds revealing other view points, the summit, and little groups of cramponed and leashed together hikers far below. I made my first snow angel in years. I think Side Hill got envious. Duck claims to have a video that would end any political carreer I might consider. We saw a group of hikers depart from one of the caves onto an ice causeway path a couple of feet thick with thousand foot drop-offs on both sides. Not sure about that-- you couldn't see the bottom either way. We saw another group of three come in. Wonder how they passed each other?

My roomie Larry showed up and I got him oriented. This morning I shared some French coffee with him and he gave me diabetes. The baked goods around here are pretty good.

This early morning, the valley winds took light fog down valley. The peaks are clear and there are diddly squat for high clouds and certainly no waves. It is going to be a good day to fly :)

Aloha,

John