8/3/14 - Les Houches and St. Gervais

We are in yet another rain cycle here in Chamonix, but we heard about this cool little crag where people go to practice dry tooling.  The area is about 20 km away so our options were to take the train or ride our bikes.  I thought it would be a fun adventure to ride down to Les Houches and take the Gondola up to the top of the ridge and bike down into St. Gervais instead of riding down the road.  So we got a mixture of bike gear, ice gear, and rock gear all packed up and we headed on our way.  The trail down from Chamonix to Les Houches was one that Bucky had just ridded yesterday through the rain while I stayed home and nursed my wounds.  About 200 m in there was a huge landslide that had apparently just happened the night before!  We pedaled on through and made it to Les Houches and up the Prarion gondola.  Once at the top we met a couple of Brits that wanted to share a ride with us.  We told them we were headed to St. Gervais, but you can catch a train back up to the top from that side as well so they were still game.  After getting started on some very fun singletrack a sheep dog started barking and chasing me.  He seemed kind of vicious, and I've had a run in with sheep dogs before, so I turned up the gas and let off the brakes and ran right into Bucky!  I turned around to make sure the dog wasn't still after me and he was no where to be seen!  It was a GHOST DOG!  Anyway, we managed to get ourselves lost so we ended up riding a 4x4 road most of the way down instead of a singletrack, but it was still fun, and probably a lot less muddy.  Once in St. Gervais we headed toward the hot springs.  The crag we were looking for was right behind the hot springs in a beautiful, almost tropical looking gorge.
  At the top of the gorge was a beautiful cascade which, judging by the signs, was thermally hot!  We did not, however, test this assumption out manually.  At the crag we picked a route and started dry tooling.  This is not something that either Bucky or I have very much experience with, and I have to say, my forearms got pumped out faster than anything else I have ever done!  Bucky took a couple of falls on lead, which were more fun than scary, and I could hardly follow them on top rope.  I certainly have to work on how I use my feet on overhanging rock.  Bucky said that I would just let my feet dangle sometimes and try and do everything with my arms.  Obviously this is not a very effective strategy!  We left the crag at about 1700 in order to make it to the last tram going back up to the ridge between St. Gervais and Les Houches.  When we got to the station, a cashier told us that the last train of the day was cancelled due to the bad weather.  It was certainly bad this morning, but it had cleared up into a beautiful afternoon.  At first we were disappointed that we couldn't do some more downhill biking, but we decided to suck it up and ride the long climb instead of taking the train.  From St. Gervais we climbed to Servoz, a quaint town snuggled up in a high valley, and from there to Les Houches.  Once at Les Houches, most of the elevation gain was done and it was only a mild, consistent climb all the way back to Chamonix.  Covered in mud, we once again had a refreshing beer on the deck.  We have commented again and again that our deck is by far the best part of our flat.  I wore a GoPro for most of the day and managed to edit the footage down to about 5.5 minutes.  If you are so inclined you can check it out here:   Les Houches and St. Gervais - Youtube