This sleepy town in Haute-Savoie is famed for its eponymous cheese, a fruity (and pricey) twist on gruyère that features heavily on the menu of every mountain restaurant from Morzine to Méribel.
There, he says, climbing is severely restricted by Soviet and American land mines concealed on nearly every mountain — including the tallest, Noshaq, a 24,580-foot glacier-topped leviathan in the Hindu Kush, which Sirat hopes to tackle in the first all-Afghan expedition next year.
For every mountain on land here there's a mountain underwater, for every valley and river there are underwater corridors or sea caves.
But with folks wearing bikinis in Boston in the middle of April and with the massive melting of ice at both poles and in nearly every mountain glacier on earth, public awareness and concern are growing rapidly.
Unlike on land, where every peak, every mountain, every hill and every valley has been discovered, described and mapped, the deep ocean floor, which makes up the largest portion of the earth's crust, is mostly terra incognita.
"But at 09 30 we contacted every mountain pass on the stage and they said 'no, it can't be done for the safety of the riders and the hundreds of workers'.
