Sometime between the ages of 14 and 30-almost-1, I grew a fear of heights. As a child, I would climb these giant pine trees in our front yard all day in the summer, and they were HIGH. You could get 30 feet up there. I had no problems then. Later my dad cruelly cut them down, but that’s a story for a different kind of post. I also remember climbing this rickety fence in our backyard to then climb a mulberry tree to eat 1297402 mulberries in the summer. Also no problem.
I suppose my fear of heights sprouted when I traversed the Canopy Walk in Kakum National Park in Ghana when I was 18. That thing is 1080 feet long, includes 7 bridges, and is 130 feet high. This is what it looks like. I did walk across the whole thing in the end, but it took me a very long time, and I’d rather not say whether I cried the entire time. (Ok, I cried the entire time. And not pretty tears, either. The kind with snot.)
So anyway. We’re staying the week in Chamonix in the French Alps, because Nic’s wonderful and lovable but crazy brother Chris is running a 62 mile race in the mountains. To entertain ourselves between trying to help Chris carbo-load, we took a train up a mountain, then we hiked down the mountain, walked across many stairs and bridges (RICKETY, METAL-GRATE STAIRS WHERE YOU CAN SEE RIGHT DOWN THE MOUNTAIN TO YOUR DEATH IN THE ROCKY VALLEY BELOW) and then:
Walked into an ice cave in a glacier.
I did my best to behave as though I do not have a crippling (though in my opinion totally practical) fear of heights. Only 95% of the reason for this fortitude was because Nic’s mom would have called me a wuss otherwise.
This is the Mer de Glace glacier near Chamonix, France. It is the largest glacier in France. It probably will not be for long though, if they keep drilling frigging ice caves into it. On the hike down to the ice cave, which is maybe 1000 feet down, there are signs showing where the glacier level was during various years. I’ll sum it up: it’s receded a LOT in the last 100 years and climate change is ruining everything, the end.
This glacier moves, I shit you not, 1 centimeter per hour. There are signs in the ice cave being like “we do a lot of work picking the spot in the glacier for the ice cave to make sure that it is perfectly safe”. Buuuuuullshit.
Everything in the ice cave, including these sculptures of chairs (?), was lit with colorful LED lights. I guess to make everything seem like the college dorm room of a dude you were definitely never going to sleep with.
This is what the glacier ice actually looked like when not lit by absurd lights from 1996. I looked for ancient aliens entombed in the glacier, but alas, no dice.
Working Title of Next Post: Ultra-Running is a Thing, and the People Who Do it are Exactly as Nutty as They Sound
– C