Red Gondola, Blue Ice
Riding in a red gondola through a landscape of snow may have been the number one thing that I wanted to do on this trip, and somehow it exceeded my expectations.
On Saturday we went to a small town in France called Chamonix. It's at the base of Mont Blanc, the tallest mountain in Western Europe.
We ate lunch at a small restaurant after touring the town. It was a happy atmosphere, and snowball fights broke out often. A stream split the town in two, and we could hear it everywhere we went.
There is no way to talk about the mountains that isn't cliché, but they really do put into perspective how big things can be and how small we are in comparison.
Chamonix makes me reconsider my feelings about winter.
This place was amazing, and it's one I know I will return to. I would love to see it in another context, maybe in Spring or Summer.
On a side note, the swans actually do the heart thing with their necks, but I don't think it's out of love because they tried to peck each other to death immediately after.
La Mer de Glace
The main attractions in Chamonix are skiing (which unfortunately didn't work out for me this time) and the glacier on the other side of the mountain. We took a little red train up to the top. Both the gondola and the train were red, which is the perfect color to contrast the snowy white background.
For reasons I will never understand, they put a giant elf sticker in the middle of the train window. It's like some kind of sick joke. All I wanted to do was look through the window at the mountains, but this cheeky lil guy was just staring right back into the depths of my soul.
Once at the top, we hiked down to the valley where the mer de glace is. It was a long way down, especially in the thin mountain air.
The level of the glacier has dropped dramatically in the past 15 years. This is a real life, concrete result of climate change. It's sad, but eye opening to know that we will probably be the last generation to experience the things like this that are disappearing from the earth.
The glacier in Chamonix is retreating at a rate of 130 feet per year.
The ice really is this blue, and it's different from ice cubes in your freezer because of the massive amounts of pressure. The weight from the ice and snow above squeezes out all the air bubbles that would be there otherwise, leaving it as only ice. Water is much better at absorbing red and yellow light than it is at absorbing blue light, therefore the blue is reflected into your eyes.
It looks very appetizing, and there was a lot of licking.
This upcoming week will be a busy one. We have finals for French and for Computation, with presentations due in each. On Monday I will be helping to perform measurements on shielding for the LHC. Mostly this is done with faraday cages to protect electronics from the massive magnetic fields that are needed to turn the particles along the loop.
