Infrastructure, Geography, and the Guide Requirement
The Aiguille du Midi cable car, operated by the Compagnie du Mont Blanc, climbs from Chamonix at 1,035 metres to a summit station at 3,842 metres in two stages, covering a vertical rise of more than 2,800 metres. It is the highest cable car in the French Alps and one of the highest in the world. The infrastructure dates to 1955, though the upper section was substantially rebuilt and modernised in the decades that followed. At the top station, an enclosed viewing terrace, a restaurant, and a series of tunnels cut through the granite needle serve the several hundred thousand visitors who make the ascent each year.
Below the summit, the Vallée Blanche is not a ski run in any institutional sense. It is a glacier itinerary — a descent of roughly 20 kilometres across the upper Mer de Glace basin — that sits entirely outside the patrolled and groomed domaine skiable of Chamonix. The route crosses crevassed terrain at altitude, and its character changes year to year as the glacier surface shifts. The Mer de Glace, which the Vallée Blanche ultimately feeds, is the largest glacier in the French Alps and carries a well-documented record of retreat; the approach from the Aiguille du Midi ridge has grown longer and steeper as the snow surface has lowered.
