La Clusaz + Snowshoeing

This Saturday, the USAC program took a day trip to La Clusaz in the Haute-Savoie region of eastern France. Our bus left Bellecour at 6:00 a.m., so I got up at 4:30 a.m. to get ready, eat breakfast, and make the bus + métro trip to the meeting point. I had intended to get some reading done for my literature course during the drive, but the temptation to rest my eyes until the sun rose was too strong. About an hour into the trip, we passed the same rest stop we'd taken a break at on the trip to Annecy the weekend before. We passed through two long tunnels under the mountains and eventually stopped at a larger rest stop with restrooms and various food options, half gas station and half restaurant. I bought myself a pain au chocolat because I was already getting hungry and lunch wasn't slated until after 1:00 p.m. I know I'm acclimating to the French lifestyle because the €2 pastry seemed overpriced! I read my book until we reached the switchback road that would take us to La Clusaz.

If you think mountain roads are stressful in a car--the dizzying drops, the flimsy guard rails, the hairpin turns--try doing it in a coach bus! Our driver was very talented, so we didn't have any incidents, but there were several occasions where cars coming down the mountain had to back up to give us room to turn. At the ski resort, those of us who needed to rent winter boots did so, and we had a minor adventure finding the restrooms. We eventually found some in the bar, where I was also able to buy a postcard. Then we met our guide for the snowshoe hike.

As we started up a hill into the mountainside, I regretted not renting boots from the resort. My Timberlands are functional and waterproof, but they rubbed with the snowshoes. The feeling went away as I focused on the exertion of walking. Our guide led us through snow-covered bogland and forest, up and down without a marked trail. As we hiked, he explained various aspects of the landscape, such as why parts of the snow formed feathery, crystalline structures called petits sapins (little fir trees). I got into my stride about halfway through the hike, walking first in our line behind the guide. I didn't fall during two tricky maneuvers over/around fallen trees. I did fall the first two times we had to slide down hills, though they weren't tumbles during the downslides so much as unbalancings when I stopped sliding. Many of the others didn't try the official snowshoe sliding technique at all, opting to go down on their butts instead. On the third hill, I didn't fall at all!

During the second half of the hike, the rubbing came back, but I powered through. We stopped at an igloo, and two other students went inside, finding a log where you could write your name. It was a welcome relief when we could see the road where we had started. Taking off the snowshoes was so freeing; my feet felt so tiny! After returning the snowshoes, we were free until 4:30 p.m., so about three hours. We split into several groups to get lunch in the quaint alpine ski town of La Clusaz. (It's pronounced la-clue-za, as my host mom told me before I left.)

There were a couple of regional foods we wanted to try--tartiflette and roblochon cheese specifically--so we almost went to a traditional restaurant. Unfortunately, we missed their lunch hours by three minutes and had to continue on. The restaurant we ended up at, the next one down the street because we were so hungry, was less traditional and out of tartiflette, so we didn't really get the food we'd been searching for. But we did get waffles--mine with crème de marron (chestnut cream)--that were incredible. We did a little browsing in shops and head back to the bus. Despite the early morning and the blisters, it was a fun trip!