A hike with alex

I went on daddy-son hike with Alex up to the Aiguille de Quaix:  a solitary finger of rock visible from the valley floor.  Alex is still finding his hiking legs, so I wasn't sure if he would make it, but he really impressed me and stomped his way all the way to the rock.  Along the way I carried him across a river (twice!),

we found a patch of snow and threw snowballs at each other, we both slipped and fell in the mud, and we scrambled up the rocky flanks of the aiguille itself.

 I should mention also that the pollution has been terrible lately and the particulate count was as bad as Beijing today.  That was part of the motivation for going up into the mountains: usually the air is a lot betters.  And while I'm sure it was better than the valley, I was surprised that even at that altitude (~1100 meters),

I could barely see the Chamchaude (2100 m) because of all the haze.