Aiguille du Midi cable car

The Aiguille du Midi is the highest of the Chamonix Aiguilles, a granite peak of three pinnacles whose central one reaches 3,842m, and its cable car climbs to it from the middle of Chamonix. The idea was first put forward around 1909, but the present line was built by the Turin promoter Dino Lora Totino between 1951 and 1955. In June 1949, to prove the project could work, six guides from Chamonix and the Aosta Valley went down the north face on the end of a cable that was then strung between the summit and the Plan de l’Aiguille; when it opened, the French Wikipedia entry notes, it was the highest and longest cable car in the world.

The line runs in two sections from the valley station at 1,035m. The first climbs to the Plan de l’Aiguille at 2,317m, where the Grand Balcon Nord begins; the second spans the whole north face without a single pylon to an upper station at 3,777m, with a lift inside the rock to the summit terraces. Up there are the glass box the Compagnie du Mont-Blanc calls “Step into the Void”, opened on 21 December 2013, and the start of the Panoramic Mont-Blanc gondola, which crosses the Glacier du Géant to Pointe Helbronner at 3,462m on the Italian side. It holds the record for the greatest vertical rise of any cable car, from 1,035m to 3,842m.

The height is the point and also the hazard. The operator forbids children under three and advises against taking those under five, names severe cold and heart problems as risks at the summit, warns of the effects of altitude, and does not allow animals. The climb from the valley station to the terraces is close to 2,800m, made in one journey, with no time on the way to adjust to it.

This suits anyone who wants to stand among the summits of the Mont Blanc massif without the training or the equipment to climb there. It is no outing for a family with a toddler or for anyone the altitude has troubled before; the Brévent, across the valley at 2,525m, gives the face-on view of Mont Blanc for about half the climb, and takes dogs on a lead in its cabins.