Chamonix

YOU CAN TALK as much as you like about Cortina, Zermatt, St Anton. You can chatter away about Jackson Hole, Queenstown, Whistler/Blackcomb. But nothing beats Chamonix. Nothing could ever beat Chamonix. This French revelation. The capital of the Alps. AND HERE I AM, at Aiguille du Midi, 3,800 m above sea level, attached by a 9 mm thick rope, nerves strung tighter than piano wire. We’ve taken the cable car from Chamonix straight up here. Now we preparing to descend an infamous ridge, with a 200 m sheer drop to the right and a 2,000 m sheer drop to the left. After which we will make our way across a few hundred metres of glacier before climbing the Arête de Cosmiques on the other side of the Aiguille du Midi. That, at least, is the plan. God only knows if it’s a good plan. First on the rope is photographer Frode Sandbech, tightly gripping an ice-axe and talking about snow getting trapped under the crampons. At the back, on the other end of the rope, is our mountain guide Wolfgang Huber, who lives in Chamonix. And way out in front, without a rope, is Wolfgang’s Swedish girlfriend Eva Eskilsson. She has climbed down this knife-edged ridge so many times that, for her, it seems like a stroll in a Stockholm park. “There’s one thing you all must promise me,” says Wolfgang. “You must not trip over your crampons. That’s dangerous.” “How dangerous?” I ask. “So dangerous you really don’t want to know,” says Wolfgang. And then we are off . Slowly, slowly down the ridge. For some reason I find myself humming a ballade by Celine Dion.

IT IS SAID that Chamonix was created by God on the eighth day – to give pleasure to skiers, climbers, mountaineers, mountain bikers, paragliders, fell runners and base-jumpers. If that is the case, He did a fantastic job. The first tourists arrived in Chamonix on 21 June 1741. They were the British aristocrats Pocock and Windham – and they were not sure what kind of welcome they would receive. Perhaps the inhabitants of Chamonix were barbarians who killed tourists and ate them for dinner with a spot of wine and cheese? Pocock and Windham were taking no chances, and had equipped themselves with quantities of weapons and bodyguards. Quite unnecessarily. As it turned out the people of Chamonix were so hospitable that Pocock and Windham thought they had arrived in heaven. And on their return to Britain they spread the word about the most beautiful valley in the Alps. And about the huge mountain, Mont Blanc. It would be 45 years before anyone managed to reach the top. On August 8th 1786 two Frenchmen, Balmat and Paccard, became the first people to stand on Europe’s roof. That started a new era of tourism in Chamonix. Today between 80,000 and 100,000 people visit Chamonix every day during the summer season. It almost beggars belief.

“COME ON,” shouts Wolfgang. “Just chuck your butt over the cliff and go for it.” We have been climbing for two hours. We are now standing by an abseiling point together with roped teams from Italy, France, Britain and Germany. We are queuing to go over the edge. The most exotic queue I have ever waited in. On the one side is a drop of several hundred metres. On the other side a drop of several thousand. But people are munching on baguettes and croissants as if they were sitting in a pavement cafe. You can see Mont Blanc reflected in people’s sunglasses. And way, way down there the tourists are going about their business in the centre of Chamonix. While up here, under the clouds, are we. So high, so high.

AND NOW IT’S OUR TURN. We lower ourselves over the edge and down a steep, narrow gully. Then we traverse a series of narrow shelves before we arrive at a vertical wall, about 30 m high. Are we meant to climb that? With crampons on our feet? “Ja wohl,” says Wolfgang. And smiles like Arnold Schwarzenegger did in the 1980s. Eva leads the way. She places the front spikes of her crampons in microscopically small chinks in the wall. It look like child’s play, but soon proves to be astonishingly difficult. Have you ever tried climbing up a sheer rock wall with 12 sharp iron spikes under your shoes? It feels a bit like Bambi on ice. Only much louder, much sharper, much scarier. Iron on rock. Man against gravity. “Come on,” says Wolfgang. “Put some effort into it!” I would like to have made some elegant moves. I would like to be mistaken for a Himalayan mountaineer. But 20 m below me stands a guide from Milan – and laughs. He looks like he’s just come straight off Mount Everest. I look like I’ve just come straight out of an Oslo coffee bar.

WE CLIMB ON. The Arête de Cosmiques is no worse than many Norwegian mountain ridges. But the air is considerably thinner. I feel a headache start to sneak in under my helmet. I stop for something to drink. I drink a litre of water. It doesn’t help. The headache is here to stay. But now I can hear the joyful cries of some Japanese tourists off in the distance. They are standing on the platform at the Aiguille du Midi’s top station, studying the climbers through telephoto lenses. “We are the attraction of the day,” says Eva. “Do I look tough?” I ask. “Or pale?” Eva just smiles and leads the last few rope lengths up to the Japanese. To reach them we have to climb up a 10 m iron ladder. Beneath my backside is the abyss. The definition of the abyss. The tourists snap away with their cameras and watch us, awestruck expressions on their faces. I forget my headache for a moment. Until the young man next to me faints from altitude sickness. Then I feel a wee bit tired, too.

CHAMONIX IS NOT JUST high mountains, steep, snow-filled gullies and three-day stubble. Chamonix is also a cosy town centre, with countless restaurants, sports shops and kiosks selling souvenirs. American tourists and Russian billionaires wander back and forth searching for Goretex jackets, plastic animals and cheese fondues. Wolfgang and Eva know the places to go and the places to avoid. At the Scandinavian restaurant Chambre Neuf we tuck into a good meal, and start talking about tomorrow. About mountain biking. About cable cars to take us to the best paths. About downhill bikes as big as a Harley Davidson. I can’t wait.

AND SO WE CYCLE. And the day after that, we run. Chamonix shows all its many faces: the sun bakes down, it rains cats and dogs, the views take our breath away, the fog hides the mountains entirely. And high above, on day three, with trainers on my feet, and an espresso and a banana in my stomach, I think that Chamonix is too good to be true. This is a lie. This is an airbrushed picture postcard. The whole place is a Photoshopped montage put together by a mad outdoorsman.