Vive la Colorado: How to avoid post-expedition blues

One rainy evening during our final weeks in Chamonix, we met up with guides Adam and Caroline George for a drink at a chic little bar. Caroline asked who I’ve worked with at Climbing magazine, and I asked what topics she’d covered for Climbing. “My first story was about post-expedition blues,” she said. I’d never [...]

Le Jour du Tour

Anyone planning a sojourn to a stage of the Tour de France should bring the following three things: a bottle of water, a sense of humor, and an escape plan. We hopped on a train in Chamonix to head to Annecy on Thursday, where the final time trial of the Tour was held this year. [...]

Workation France: Après-ick

I was sick of being sick. We’d been in France for about a month, and I’d been sick most of that time. Just as I started to feel better, I came back from visiting our friends in Hamburg with an upper-respiratory gunk. In late June, a bright morning sun shone over Chamonix and I glared [...]

Workation France: To Hamburg and the North Sea, Part 1

When your German friends invite you to take a walk on the beach, ask how many tens of kilometers they plan to march before you answer. We took a break from our workation* in Chamonix to visit our dear friends Uwe and Frauke in Hamburg last weekend. Uwe decided that after spending so much time [...]

Workation France: What to Bring

Five things you should bring from home, four of which I’ve spent way too much money on since we’ve arrived in France but are essential for a workation*: Sunscreen: You can’t skate out of a pharmacy or even a grocery store with sunscreen for under 10 euro, about $13.85 at the current exchange rate. Even [...]

The Alps, the laissez-faire way

If you live away from the mountains, the only time you hear about a climbing accident is if something big goes down on Mt. Everest, or if the Today Show picks up an amazing tale of survival from a fourteener hike gone wrong. But when you live in the mountains, climbing and skiing accidents appear [...]

Workation France: Squeezing In

This summer, I’m conducting a work/play experiment in the Alps. I’ve moved my home office from Colorado to Chamonix, a lovely but sometimes insanely touristy town at the foot of Mont Blanc. This post is the first in a series about temporarily living and working in a premiere trekking and climbing destination–and another country. Settling [...]