First day with Andy and Elaine in Cham. Planned to take cable car up to La Flegere and walk from there across the heights to Lac Blanc before creating a circular route back down via lac du Montaigne along the bottom by chalet Chesery.
A steady start where I gave Elaine the poles to assist in walking. Took the time to educate on the use of poles, their benefits and advantages. Was good to talk about biomechanics and energy retrieval through use of poles as well as structure whilst hiking, as well as added length of limbs to support down hill walking and up hill minor scrambling.
As we moved up I talked about the geology of the alps (granite and the three types of minerals being Quartz, pink feldspar and plagioclase/ gneiss (being a metamorphic rock that was formed out of granite being broken down and remade under intense pressure) and limestone. I then compared this with snowdonia being mainly Rhiolyte, granite and limestone. Then talked about the Mer de Glacé and glaciation and pointing out Morraines, as well as roche moutoneè which have been abundant in some areas of the glaciers but I can also relate these back to snowdonia. Obviously pyramidal peaks, showing how amazing some of the mountain scales are but again saying how in the past snowdonia was higher. The alps are growing as much as they’re crumbling.
We moved along and I coached Elaine through walking on uneven ground which she found ver helpful, particularly the higher and lower sections as we traversed some of the rock moving from lac Blanc. On the way back I found stags horn club moss which is a first for me so was very happy.
Overall a fantastic day out, lasting at 5.5 hours it was enjoyable, well planned, well coached, well led and well educated!
