I'd done everything in Lyon I wanted to do, so when I woke up on August 25th I took a train to Montpellier. One short and uneventful train ride later I was closer to the Mediterranean that I ever had been before ( Read more... )

I only had one particular plan for my time in Lyon. To film lovers, Lyon is famous as the site of Workers leaving the Lumiere factory, which is often cited as the first motion picture ever made. Here it is:

Click to view

It's not much by today's standards, but it spawned a revolution. In fact, just a few weeks before I left for Europe I attended the opening ( Read more... )

After 12 days, the REI adventure portion of my sabbatical was complete, but I still had more than two weeks to enjoy in Europe. It was time to make the acquaintance of the much vaunted European train system.

First, we were bused back to the Geneva airport. I parted ways with the group (and I should have gotten some email addresses, doh). I ( Read more... )

We had finished the Tour du Mt Blanc, we had hit Aiguille du Midi, and we still had a day left. No worries, we still hadn't seen the Mer de Glace!

Depending on how you define 'glacier', the Mer De Glace is the largest glacier in all of France, and the second largest in Europe. It was the first major tourist attraction in Chamonix. Guides would ( Read more... )

According to our guides, the Aiguille du Midi is the third most popular tourist attraction in France. We'd originally been slated to go on August 23, but since it is a giant observation tower high on a mountain and the forecast for the 23rd was gray and gloomy, we decided that we'd take advantage of our sunny weather and squeeze it in that ( Read more... )

One side benefit to getting a lot of extra sleep on account of collapsing in exhaustion is that I felt much better when I woke up on Saturday, August 22, I was raring to go. I'm glad, because it would have been a shame to miss the very last day of the Tour du Mt Blanc. Everyone in the group managed this last day. After a nice breakfast at the hotel ( Read more... )

So what happens when you hike for eight days in a row, the last of which leaves you utterly bone tired?

To put that in context, my first Grand Canyon hike was one very strenuous day. My second Grand Canyon hike was two very strenuous days in a row. A really heavy workout week might involve 90 miles of bike riding broken into ten segments, three ( Read more... )

Our first full day in Switzerland was comparatively easy. Our second had some of the most gorgeous views of the entire trip, but was utterly exhausting, at least for me personally ( Read more... )

My first morning in Switzerland was gray and gloomy. We spent the morning hoping it wouldn't rain as we hiked alongside a river. The river in question had recently been hit by a flash flood. A bare trickle of river went through a giant gouged out bed where rocks and trees had been thrown in all directions. It was stark proof that mother nature is ( Read more... )

Ok, enough interludes. We woke up on Tuesday, August 17 at the Bonatti Refuge. Because we'd stayed overnight, all of us had more gear than usual in our packs (change of clothes, towel, pharmaceuticals, that sort of think) and because we were up on the top of a mountain we had no lunch buffet. Therefore, after breakfast our first order of business ( Read more... )