Bikes Packed, Sun Is Out

It's been raining enough the last couple days to curtail our urge to ride up the long climbs here, not wanting to creep back down a long, cold descent on wet pavement, but we've had some nice shorter rides. From our first day's ride into Switzerland, here are a couple of shots of the typical terrain up a steep climb and a view back toward France from partway up.

With rain again this morning, we opted to just hike today, so we took a tram up the mountain and traversed the face of it. Torsten points out a glacier here:

The trail offered some dramatic backdrops.

And we got some dizzying views of Chamonix.

We were rewarded with arriving above a huge glacier:

and descended to this building (restaurant, etc):

Along the way we crossed paths with a chamois,

To get off the mountain we took a train down a much steeper grade than it appears in these pictures

Here's Harlan compensating leaning backward to be vertical:

As we packed up our bikes the sun came out, but that's fine--it's nice to see our shadows again and we are looking forward to a lot more riding in Brittany. Meanwhile, on to Chartres tomorrow.