I tool a fair few photos whilst staying in the French Alps, just a few miles from the Swiss border. It was the first time I'd spent any proper time in the alps, as the previous time was in Austria but then I was only really 'passing through'. These are some of my favourite pics from that time. Please scroll down to view the images...

All photos
© Gordon Heaney 2008

One morning whilst staying in the French Alps, I took the car up around the other side of the alp our hotel was on. The plan was to take some distant photos of Mont Blanc (see below) but on the way, I saw this small lake and noticed the way the sun was shining over it and just had to stop the car and capture the moment. You can see the car parked just across the other side of the lake. [August 1999]

A view towards the Italian border from a viewpoint at Mont Blanc. I like this rock formation on the left that contrasts well with the distant alps. The trip up invloved going up the steepest cable car in the world. Being in a cable car with about 40 other people going up a near vertical cable inch by inch was a little tense. [August 1999]

This is the view from the other side of the alp we were staying on, looking over a valley towards a distant Mont Blanc - the tallest mountain in Western Europe. I liked the fact it was so far away, it was only just visible through the alpine air. [August 1999]

I like the viewing balcony on the sheer cliff face, looking towards the vastness of Mont Blanc. The mountain seems split in two by the largest glacier I have seen. [August 1999]

During our stay in the French Alps, we had a few encounters with wild horses. They would often come down off the mountain in the evening and wander around the garden of the hotel. Here are some wild horses during the day, grazing on an alp just across from 'our alp'. [August 1999]

This photo shows how many and how and how large the glaciers were on Mont Blanc. This was nearly 10 years ago - it makes me wonder how much of them is left today. I'm not a huge environmentalist, but if all the alpine glaciers I've seen were to disappear, it would be a great shame. [August 1999]

It sounds like medication, but Morzine is actually the French town we stayed in on our visit. Well, not quite - our hotel was half way up the alp you can (just) see in this picture. This is a view from Morzine looking towards 'our alp'. [August 1999]

If ever I doubted how high Mont Blanc actually was, this is a view looking down to Chamonix, the town at the foot of the mountain. Chamonix has an altitude of around 3500 feet and this photo was taken at a height of 12500 feet. So this view is 9000 feet above the town, nearly 2 miles up! Whoa! [August 1999]

This was the view we had from our hotel down towards the town of Morzine below. The tour de France passes through Morzine and the cyclists use the roads round our alp. Not a great photo but it reminds me of the peace and quiet. [August 1999]

We took a ride on a tiny cable car that carried us over a huge glacier towards the Italian side of Mont Blanc. This short cable car trip will remain with me forever not only because of the amazing views but because I have never heard such a sound of utter silence as I did when I stuck my head out of the car as it stopped every few miniutes. Fantastic. It's also hard to imagine the scale of the glacier when seeing it in a photo, but some of the ice formations were stunning. [August 1999]

This photo reminds me of the warm summer evenings in the alps and how warm the evening light was. [August 1999]

Taken from Mont Blanc, this is a view over one of the glaciers. If you look closely, you can just see a small line of dots down on the ice. It's a group of climbers in single file, slowly moving up the mountain. There were tents pitched down there too. [August 1999]