Tour du Mont Blanc

During the summer months of 2018, I split my time giving historical tours of Harvard and studying hickory buds in Ned Friedmann's lab at the Arnold Arboretum. I decided to study the buds because I didn't have another summer internship, and they were “naked” (i.e., they didn't have scales) which piqued my interest on the email asking for an RA.

The summer was one big, slow rolling, bead of sweat. Between asking people from all over the world why on earth they'd choose to visit Harvard and rows of hickory saplings, I was restless. On one of those, 80-degree, 90% relative humidity days at the Weld Hill field station, with big puffy clouds dragging along above, I decided in between beeps of the photometer to get outta Boston.

A couple days of research and a quick hop to Geneva later, I was heading southbound on A40 to Chamonix, France where I'd begin the solo, 105-mile Tour du Mont Blanc. Craning from the second row of the passenger van, I saw the first glacier of my life on the Dent Blanche.

I'd see many more in the next 9 days.