Proof

I wasn't kidding yesterday about the weather raining and raining. I don't mind though, got lots of work to do.

Layered cloud outside the office.

Alpine evening

Was a really nice evening last night, so took some photos of what we can see fromt he farm. Andy and I sat outside and had a look around. The snow's pretty much gone except for on the higher peaks where it remains all year round.

Looking down into Les Houches


Aiguillette des Houches (not very high - only around 2000m)


Looking up to the Aiguille du Midi (3842m, 12,605 feet)


Looking up the valley

End of the Season

So today's the last day of the season - officially. Les Grands Montets ski area (the highest in the valley) closes its remaining open lifts and the continuing shutdown of Chamonix will be complete. I've been roped in to do some house-sitting and dog-sitting and I'll make a mooch back to blighty at some stage during the interseason. To be honest it's very quiet here and it's easier to focus on work and i'm enjoying knuckling down at the moment.

Moved House

So I've moved house a couple of days ago! And thought I'd post up some photos of the new place as well as say hello.

As mentioned in my previous blog posting, I've moved to Les Houches - a small village just outside of Chamonix. The house is an old farmhouse high up on one of those zig-zag country lanes that rise up from the village, in fact we're about 1200m along the road after it leaves Les Houches to climb upwards. We live at somewhere around 4,500 feet above sea level!

The farmhouse is actually owned by a mate who's rented the top half out for some time now, and luckily my housemate and I have managed to secure the place for the next year - banzai!

So here it is:

The farmhouse.

Inside there's a few bedrooms and quite a lot of space - it's pretty big. Unfortunately there's no real central heating so much of the heat comes through the wood burning stove in the lounge and there's a few electric heaters around the place. It does get a bit nippy sometimes but foraging down into the lower reaches of the duvet soon sorts that out. There's currently no washing machine either so often I'll find Andy's washing in the kitchen sink! Good news is that the landlord's going to stick one in and Andy and I can put our cash together and buy a dishwasher.


The kitchen.


The living room with wood-burning stove, Chris in the far corner, Jonny Slippers (both paying a passing visit) and Andy's legs.

My room is pretty damn cool. It's got one of the beams going through it that support the house. I'm pretty stoked to be honest as the whole thing is wood-pannelled as well. Really mint - looks like the inside of a sauna! I've also got a tv with an XBox/dvd player so I can watch movies and play games. The whole place has got a 10MB wireless interweb connection as well.


My room with TV, XBox and a couple of boards.


The rest of my room with the balcony and pillar support. More boards on the left!

The best thing about living there is the remoteness - away from everyone and everything just being able to live a pretty minimal peaceful existance. There's balconies all around the place, and this is the view from mine.


Looking up the valley towards Chamonix with the Grands Montets mountain the most prominent. Mont Blanc is just around to the right.

We've even got a dog, Digby, roaming around on a lead.


Digby the Dog.

All in all, very cool. Along with Merv the Swerve, my P plated white Renault van, all is going better and starting to really settle in here. I've been recommended for a contract that I can work on out here by a mate in London which is ongoing development work for a dance music website as well as another contract for a local produce ordering website. With these under my belt that will provide really quite a good standard of life out here. Everything seems to be coming together now. Really stabalising and in a couple of months time I should be settled in properly and will be awaiting the summer with relish.

I've talked a lot with Andy about doing the Haute Route - 180km high-mountain walk from Chamonix to Zermatt in Switzerland. Essentially from Mont Blanc to the Matterhorn. It's a pretty serious undertaking but in good weather the views and rewards will be fantastic. I guess it's a legacy of my Dad taking us out to the Alps when we were kids. I remember walking around the mountains surrounding the Ossiachersee in the Austrian Alps when I was young and it was loads of fun. Admittedly I'm carrying a little more weight than then, but I've lost around a stone and a half since I've been here and feel fit and pretty lean. I'm sure that I'll slim down even further in due course with the summer sports calendar that's rearing its head. For the moment, though, I've found I'm noticably fitter than most of the people I hike and ride with and it's always pleasing to look fit and healthy.

So all in all I'm a pretty happy bunny. I've only had one real low period since I've been here and I hope with all the fresh air and activity both mental and physical as well as not living in a manic ski resort anymore it should mean that those times will be few and far between. I certainly hope so.

I'm working on a mashup of GPS tracking and google maps at the moment so you can see information and routes plotted onto an actual map in real time. It's pretty cool and we're extending it up so that we can get all the information for Chamonix and the surrounding area on there as well. It's looking really good and it's great to be producing some really cool stuff. I'm hooking it into our advertising model as well so it'll be another part of the revenue stream and we've more people joining us to sell the advertising too so all in all, it's looking very healthy for the future of chamonix-valley.com our flagship business here. Game on!

Hello!

So I've not posted in a while - and that's naughty! Should be more proactive with the blog. But the interim time between now and the last post has been packed full. So lots to report.

I've secured a place to live in Les Houches for the foreseeable future living in an old farmhouse with my mate Andy. It's really mint - old wooden chalet style high up on the mountain away from everyone and everywhere with a high-speed internet connection and surrounded by snow. Just ideal and I'm really looking forward to living there.

I've bought some transport. Another mate, Leighton, who used to work as a chef at Le Delice (the restaurant co-owned by one of my old school friends) is leaving the mountains to work on the barges and is selling his old Renault Express van for a few hundred euros. Snapped it up - needs the headlights changing over to continental ones but a swift search on eBay has yielded some positive results.

I've managed to do some really good stints of work knuckling down and working like a demon for days on the trot. This is really good news as it means I know that I can ignore the mountains when there's important stuff to do. It's a personal thing I know, but it feels good to know that distractions can be ignored and when there's work to do, there's no shirking away from it.

I rode for the Chamonix team in the Boss des Bosses mogul competition (bosses in french means bumps, not bosses!). It's a competition held each year between a load of resorts (Courchevel, Zermatt, Chamonix, Val d'Isere, Meribel, Verbier) and there's mostly skiers but also a couple of boarders in the teams. I got draughted in at the last minute and didn't do too badly. Chamonix came second to Zermatt in the final, and my record stood at a mildly respectable won one, lost two. I was pleased to contribute and did a few nice tricks off the kicker at the end.


The Boss des Bosses course.

So all in all it's been pretty nifty. Work's going well, going to get a dream place on the mountain which will by my own space (albeit sharing with a mate!), got transport and starting to officially feel like a resident of Chamonix.


Giant moguls on the Boss des Bosses course.

Front page of google baby!

Oh yeah, come to Daddy!

We've made it to the front page of google.com when searching for Chamonix (google search)! This is awesome news as it means we're going to get a bundle more hits to the site (chamonix-valley.com) and make our advertising system we're implementing and selling that much more valuable to customers.

Feel the love!