firechick's VirtualTourist Home Page

Home sweet home...

This year, the new ski pass in Chamonix called the 'Unlimited' includes Chamonix skiing (including top station at Grandes Montets), Aiguille du Midi top, Les Houches and unlimited access to Courmayeur Italy and reduced prices on the Tunnel of Mt Blanc which connects the 2 resorts by car.

For summer, the lifts are opening a bit earlier this year and a bit closing later. Reflection of global warming, but good for the hikers who want to come out and avoid the crowds of July and August.

Recently updated pages include:

Chamonix

Annecy

And one of my favorite pages is one that almost no one seems to look at, which is a small town in the Bernese Alps in Switzerland which is great for hiking.
Lauenen

I live in Chamonix-Mont-Blanc France with my husband and our Bernese Mountain Dog mix.

We are both rock climbers and skiers, and do a fair amount of hiking too.

He's from the UK and I am ...eeek, an American (lived in Chicago for 12 years....)

I maintain another home page that usually gets updated every 1-2 months with information about what we are doing in Chamonix lately.

http://www.geocities.com/genyphyr1

The french central government has acted against the wills of the people of Chamonix and the surrounding cities by allowing large trucks back through the Mont Blanc Tunnel.

Why they stuck a tunnel through the biggest mountain in Europe is beyond me, but they did. It was closed for 3 years after nearly 40 people were killed in a fire when a truck and car collided.

Now, no one wants the trucks back except the French and Italian central (not local) governments (A referendum in Chamonix where 99% voted AGAINST the return of trucks were declared 'illegitimate' by the departmental government).

The people in both Italy (on the other side of the tunnel - Val d'Aosta) and France don't want it. The pollution generated in this narrow valley by the hundreds of diesel trucks is awful and is ruining this beautiful valley!

See the website! The Association for the Respect of the Site of Mont Blanc has updates on the struggle to get the freight transported via rail (train) instead of truck. Mostly their website is in French again which is too bad. Previously they appeared to be trying to reach out for more support worldwide by also having their site in Italian (Italy is at the other side of the tunnel so duh!), English (a good 30% of Chamonix is English-speaking) and German (to appeal to the Swiss and Austrians who also have alpine tunnel issues to fight). Now that's gone for some stupid reason. Oh well. I gave my donation this year anyhow and probably will next year, unless a better organization comes along.

It's not going so well as a political struggle now, as the ARSMB has had it's main leader leave last year due to political differences in the group. He was the driving force and organized the best protests, so now all the protests have rather stopped, which is too bad.

If you visit town, go into the Patagonia store or the book store on Rue Paccard (the one with all the anti-truck literature in their windows!)to sign any new petitions.

Originally the government claimed they were only allowing alternating truck traffic (one direction for heavy goods trucks, changing to the opposite direction in a few hours).

Now that decision has been reversed, and 2 way heavy goods trucks are allowed. The tunnel is more narrow than modern ones and the trucks pass quite close. The ARSMB has some pollution statistics posted to show what's happening.