Doing your own film scanning is like running your own time machine. If you keep digging through binders you find all kinds of old stuff.

 

Kirk. Circa 1978. Early Fall. Up in Chamonix climbing mountains with a girlfriend.

I was in France with a girlfriend. We spent most of September that year trekking around and tent camping. We stayed for a while in Avignon and then headed West toward Carcassonne and Perpignan. When we swung back through Paris my friend, Christian, suggested we go visit his brother in Les Houches, just down the road from Chamonix. His family had a nice house there. It was primitive then, outside of Chamonix proper (1978), but friends tell me now that it's a thriving ski resort area. After a few days acclimating to the altitude and digging into the family's amazing wine cellar we headed over to see what Mont Blanc was all about. I did a lot of (non-technical) climbing in a well worn pair of Vasque hiking boots and old denim jeans. 

My girlfriend was a runner and in good shape. Up and down the steep angles like a mountain goat and me, a swimmer, huffing and puffing to keep up. But so much fun when you are young and unfettered by schedules, budgets or worldly concerns. Our biggest burdens at the time were our backpacks.

I'm not sure what the name of the peak was where she grabbed my Canonet QL 17 mk. 3 point and shoot camera and snapped this shot but I know the we were there the last week that the little café/way station was open. Most of the higher altitude infrastructure closed down back then when the first snows hit. 

After a couple weeks of kicking around in those mountains we headed over to Grenoble and then on to Geneva. The mountains are fun.... once you get past the altitude blahs and the thinner air. 

I took most of the photos on that trip but I'm thankful that my friend snapped a few of me. That's quite a head of hair.

from a noisy and very underexposed Fujifilm 100 slide. Adobe to the rescue...