A Vending Machine Has Stolen My Baby in Chamonix

I can be compulsive.

Ever since my first time in Chamonix, France, during UTMB week in 2025, I’ve done Breakfast Route pretty much every morning. Breakfast Route doesn’t appear on any of the UTMB race courses; in fact, it’s on the other side of the valley from where most of the UTMB trails are. But that’s also the point.

While all week I’m almost entirely consumed with race meetings, race events, race gear, race profiles, and race coverage for six days straight—following some of the greatest off-road athletes in the world—I need a break.

I found my break and my respite on a beefy 8-mile loop that climbs the southeast side of the valley and ends at a delightful little refuge that serves apple cinnamon fritters and takes credit cards. By my best measurements, the nearest road to this spot is at least a mile away (as the bird flies, so probably more) and about 3,000 feet below.

But back to my compulsion: This year I couldn’t get Breakfast Route out of my mind. I swear I woke up in the middle of the night asking myself, “I wonder what Breakfast Route is doing right now?” My first night there, I opened the window, looked up into the dark Mont Blanc massif, and thought about it. (Suffice to say, in those moments I was in the throes of what I now know is my standard-but-bizarre jet-lag-induced nocturnal psychosis.)

That said, I think the reason I was acting so crazy about Breakfast Route is because I really miss my family 6,000 miles away—specifically my three-year-old daughter. I think when I was waking up in the middle of the night, wondering what Route was doing, I was really wondering what she was doing.

The connection there is that while you’re in the middle of event coverage, you can’t think of much else but event coverage, but when you’re out of it, dragging your body up 4,000 feet of vert you’re free to think about the things that mean the most to you.

On that particular trail, it only takes about 400 meters to be clear of everything and everyone, picking your way through uneven roots between pine trees, alpine meadows, giant rockfall boulders, then finally to a clearing with a small hut built into the side. If I see two people on my early morning hour-and-a-half ascent, I’m shocked.

So up there, surrounded by nature and creation, I get a brief natural reprieve; like a giant treelined hug. I think about where I need to put my foot; I think about how grateful I am; I pray; I think about my daughter.

To put it more clearly: When I miss Breakfast Route, I miss my daughter.

So imagine me having this tiring-but-spiritual experience four days ago for the first time this year, cresting the final climb, clawing across the boulder field, and slipping behind the refuge in expectant hope for the view I remembered from a year ago.

I turned the corner, looked out, and saw: a vending machine.

I won’t go into too much detail about the vending machine itself, but I know it was placed there, via helicopter, by a (major) sportswear brand, and it’s related to the race I’m covering. It was set there the week before the event, and I was told by the refuge workers that it would be choppered off by its owners the next Monday.

It’s camo—either for branding purposes or to be “less obstructive” to the view. But—and this is very, very important—there were many spots you could place it in that space, and someone chose that exact one. It could have been snugged up against the patio or the side of the refuge itself. Instead, there it is, right between the viewer and the view, probably for pictures and chatter, just like what you’re reading right now.

When you have millions of dollars in marketing budget (to build things like helicopter-delivered camo vending machines), things aren’t just randomly placed in places.

Knowing that it’s contextually hyperbolic, I can’t help but think of a verse in the Bible that says “But when you see the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not to be […] then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.” (Mark 13:14, ESV) (But first: I don’t believe a vending machine at a refuge in France is a sign of the end times; I need to make that crystal clear.)

Obviously that verse is packed with way more meaning and importance than what I’m writing about here, but I can’t shake the message and its direction: When you see something where it definitely shouldn’t be, flee. Flee where? The mountains.

But what if I’m in the mountains? Do I flee farther up? I was troubled…

I conflated my morning time in the mountains with being wrapped in nature and thinking about my daughter that I miss so much and fleeing the things of this world. My escape had been physically altered. The stuff on the valley floor had been choppered up 4,000 feet. Had a vending machine kidnapped my daughter?

At about 8 p.m. I can see the light go on at the Rifugio almost 4,000 feet up from my balcony back in town. It’s been three days since my first encounter with the vending machine. Since then, I’d run up every single morning just to sneak in some time of escape, but also to see if it was still there. I’d become compulsively obsessed.

Later that night, I saw two little points of light descending Breakfast Route at a runner’s pace in the fast closing darkness. I wondered if those little points of light were having fun or if they were thinking about vending machines.

Then I realized: They were probably having the time of their lives, blasting down that rooted tunnel of darkness, hyper-focused on precisely their next footstrike and they had no space in their minds for vending machines. Maybe I should follow their lead; maybe I shouldn’t worry so much about vending machines. But it’s just so hard when things are in the place where they shouldn’t be.

The way I first saw it, a vending machine effectively had stolen my baby, but not really (obviously). To extend the metaphor to an even further illogical conclusion, maybe it’s more like the vending machine was like a little rash on my daughter’s neck. It was unsightly and mildly irritating, but it’ll be gone on Monday, hoisted away by a helicopter (as rashes are), and everything will be like it was before, come Tuesday.

The trick for me is to be more like those headlamps, because when I’m not like headlamps, and I think about vending machines or rashes or whatever, that’s when I lose focus on what matters.

On my third day, as I began descending Breakfast Route, I started thinking about something stupid when I should have been thinking about where to put my foot: vending machines. Guess what happens when you don’t-headlamp and think about things like that? You roll your freaking ankle.

After hobbling the final three miles down into town, it dawned on me that there’s no chance I’d be back up Breakfast Route again this year; my ankle was completely jacked. I would be OK, and I could walk fine, but I wouldn’t see my baby again, except that—most obviously—I would.

And of course I can’t fully blame a global sportswear brand for my current physioexistential crisis; I could only blame my own anxious, distracted mind. I didn’t focus on the ground in front of me, the creation I was running on and around and through, or the things that actually matter. I was thinking about things that don’t. Like vending machines.