Lac Bleu - Even Better than Lac Blanc

After taking a day to recover from our ascent on Lac Blanc, we got up early in the morning and took the cable up the mountain. Lac Bleu just happened to be up there, evidently not a big tourist attraction because there was only one other person there besides us, and we walked horizontally-ish across to the other mountain, where I saw Les Drus - the mountain I totally fell in love with. 

This is a photo of Les Drus that I discovered in my favorite shop in Chamonix. It is a huge photo; 4-5 feet across and about 2 feet tall. It's very impressive in person and I agonized my whole time in Chamonix as to whether to spend the $500 for an unframed photo. I decided that I needed to go check out this mountain in person before making the decision.

After getting off the cable we walked along a lush green meadow to reach Lac Bleu.

Then we reached the Lac. It was still quite early in the morning, and the colors were intense, the air was cool, and the sun was coming up behind the mountain.

 The Lac was surrounded by gigantic boulders. We decided we were going to walk around the lac; it was a smaller lac, and got halfway and realized the error of our ways, but were committed by then. 

Here's Noah walking around the Lac. See how big the boulders are?

From where he was standing

As we traversed the beautiful mountain we saw the sun trying to peep over the mountain. 

Yep, that's snow. 

It was beyond words beautiful. 

Then we got to walk across the mountain to Les Drus. We saw many amazing sites, including Aiguille Du Midi.

There is a look out on top of Du Midi. We didn't go up there but now I wish we had. From there it is supposed to have an amazing view of Mont Blanc.

I guess we save that for next time. 

But we saw other amazing sites.  

And a series of photos that brought the sun up over the mountain!

 Just starting to peep out around the mountain...

Oh my gosh, here it comes! 

There is is! 

That may have been the best part of my vacation. Such stillness, clarity, quiet beauty.

Ok, so, as usual, we had fallen off the path and had to find our way back to it in order to get across the mountain to see Drus. This included climbing on gigantic humongous rocks. 

Through beautiful wildflowers and rivulets.

A view across the valley where we stopped to snack. 

 Our path ahead ....

Looking across at the other side of the mountain and the village of Chamonix. 

  

 This side of the mountains are very green, lush, serene. 

 We had the most beautiful walk across the mountain to the other side where we met Les Drus, and took the train down the mountain. 

We saw lots of beautiful flowers. 

 A lovely spot at the lookout to Les Drus, full of wildflowers, rocky spaces, and amazing views of the mountain and the glacier in the mountain valley.  

And alas, my mountain!

I couldn't take enough pictures of my favorite mountain. 

It had a little pet cloud that day. 

And here is me with Les Drus!

And here is its glacier. 

 What a wonderful day that was. Probably my favorite of the whole trip, and that's saying something. 

And I was decided. I went to the shop to purchase the amazing, gigantic photo of Les Drus. To discover that it had been sold earlier that day. 

The photographer was up on Mont Blanc and couldn't get me another one before we left the next morning. 

Ah, well. 

Next installment will take us to Zermatt, Switzerland ... where we climbed to the base camp of The Matterhorn!