Simon Butcher

After a quick visit to buy some dirt cheap Lafuma hiking shoes that were on sale, we were ready to visit whatever awaited us. We didn't know very much, other than the park is walking distance from the centre of Chamonix, and it involves lots of ropes and trees.

A stunning view of Chamonix from Les Planards chairlift. Those clouds are from a storm that has been threatening to roll in all day, and even grumbled a few times while we were doing the adventure course.

After a quick lesson in safety from the staff and instructions on how to use the safety harnesses, we were off on our first “site” — The red ropes are for a safety pulley or carabiner, and the yellow ropes are for holding onto. Later in the course, more advanced sites omit the yellow rope forcing you to rely on balance and strength alone!

There are a couple of courses, ranging from children sized courses to adult sized. The adult courses run through the trees, between 10–20 metres above the ground. If you look carefully, you will see a child-sized course running underneath the adult course in this picture. This was still an early site, so it wasn't very high yet.

Weee! I like flying foxes! This long flying fox is the end of one of the sites half way through the course, coming through the trees and out into a clearing. The sites often included “Tarzan swings”, flying foxes, rope ladders, rope nets, and even weird contraptions such as a skate-board rolling over rope…

Urgh! I hate rope nets, especially when they're bending all over the place as you try to climb over them. One of the sites ends with a “Tarzan swing” over a ≅75 metre clearing onto a rope net, which you must grab onto. Some of us didn't quite survive this challenge unscathed — But I did!

I've always liked rock climbing, but sadly I'm no longer fit enough to go off and do it. The course included a few small artificial climbing walls and unfortunately the holds were really easy. I guess they need to cater for a fairly wide audience, so I can forgive them.

There are several sites, with each site starting and finishing at ground level, with an indication of the difficulty at the entrance to the site so people can skip them if they want. Within the sites themselves, some offer alternative routes around difficult challenges. We completed all of the adult sites with relative ease, so they're not all that difficult!

These elastic rope net things collapse and ensnare their victims and in turn are hilarious until such time as you're the one who needs to try to go through one.

So it may not have been the most mature decision, but the adventure course was a hell of a lot of fun and I would recommend it for a good laugh!

The storm eventually passed over us and didn't really make too much of a fuss except for a few grumbles, but it did wind up heading into Switzerland and Austria, interrupting television coverage of the Euro 2008.

We didn't really notice though, as tonight was Raclette night! We headed off to Le Sanjon — a nice restaurant with traditional wood-fired Raclette grills. Yum!

It would appear tomorrow would be our last day in Chamonix, as the car should be ready by tomorrow morning.