chamonix

This must be the top of the world. Peaks come through the clouds, but they’re below me. Everything is white and blue. My breath comes in waves. It’s the altitude. Above just over 2000m the atmospheric pressure drops, so there's less oxygen available. The brain starves for it, and that’s what’s making me dizzy. We’re at 3842m and I can feel science happening.

I'm at Aiguille du Midi, the 'needle of the middle'. Mont Blanc is in the distance. Midi is a peak accessed by the Téléphérique de l'Aiguille du Midi, the highest vertical ascent cable car in the world. I didn't know that when I chose Chamonix for my snow holiday, but I was well pleased when I discovered it. Sometimes things just work out. 

I wiggle my fingers in my snow gloves. My circulation is slacking off, though it's below zero Celsius up here. I don’t blame it. There’s other things to be doing than circulating. I, for example, am considering my own softness and warmth. People are really quite soft and warm compared to mountains. The alp kind of mountains, the rocky peaks like shards-of-glass-through-the-clouds, the timeless, hostile, windswept, avalanche kind. The hardest damn thing I’ve ever seen. These mountains are somehow made more violent by their inaction.

There's a glass box on the peak. Below it is a kilometre drop on the the frozen landscape. The glass is very clean. Almost like it's not there. I think this is excellent, in theory. In practice, I'm supplied with slippers that only just fit over my snow boots and dragged (literally, dragged) onto the transparent floor of the box while a cheerful French attendant grins and takes pictures of me cringing and the people around chuckle like I'm not about to plummet to my death. Heights have never been my thing. But if you find yourself in the French Alps, I can highly recommend Step Into the Void for kicks. 

We went and had a nose around the alpineering museum, which of course only reinforced my conviction that I'm absolutely pathetic in high places. There are people who climb these peaks with nothing but a bag of chalk dust to talk to. There's footage of their blue, ice-speckled hands, for goodness sake. I suspect they have a death wish.

On the way down, like the way up, the cable cars swing recklessly. The children inside scream as the cable changes incline, and the group of Japanese tourists beside me collectively sigh, oh. I look at the rocky horizon, which stays wonderfully still.

Everything in the valley below is iced white. I’m supposed to say blanketed. That’s the way everyone says it is. Blanketed in snow. But it’s not like that at all. There's too many gaps. The landscape is too visible. Each building is iced with a perfect even layer of fondant, like it's been cut from a decorator's sheet. It's quite incredible. I spend a lot of time in Chamonix with my eyes really wide, trying to let the whiteness and evenness and sparkly-ness of snow burn right into my brain. 

The day we arrive from the airport it isn't snowing, but everything is freshly covered and gorgeous. When I wake up the first morning, the solid shutters block the light. I had a beautiful premonition of myself throwing them open to reveal the whiteness of the world. I undo the latches and push hard. It's snowing outside. Really snowing: huge, soft flakes swirling slowly to rest on the ground. I actually stop breathing, which is rare, and am struck dumb, which is rarer. We are both incapable of doing anything but flapping our arms and gawking for a good fifteen seconds. I can truthfully say I've never been so excited about precipitation. 

The rest of the week, I'm just a kid. If you got snow in your childhood, you've probably known this bliss. Ella and I hire matching waterproof onesie snow suits. The first thing I do is lie in at drift at the side of the road. Judge away, passing cars. Then I eat some fresh powder. Then we both make some snowballs. I've got better aim. Then we make a politically correct snow person called Sampson. This whole snow lark is just so great. We sit outside in our toasty suits with bread and Camembert and watch the sun set over the mountains. 

Snow is magic. It makes everything look clean and soft. It takes the edge off the gritty parts of town and causes every lit creperie window to be doubly inviting. The temperature outside is a very good reason to move from place to place eating macarons and crepes and sipping mulled wine. As far as firsts go, my first snow put on a good show.