May 23rd, 2010 
Sheila Simkin I pulled back the drapes this morning to a brilliant blue sky, sunny day. Jumped out of bed and began preparation to haul butt over the Aiguille du Midi lift hoping that not too many bus loads of day trippers were in line before us. The Hotel d’Arve is completely filled even though season doesn’t officially begin until July 4.
Out the door for a five-block walk over to the Aiguille du Midi cable cars with light jackets on, backpacks filled with warm stuff for the top, and maps. The cable car line was longer than the last time because it is a crystal clear day. There must be little counters in the turnstiles because the line halts and doors leading to the large cable car shut when the exact amount of people (65-75) the tram safely holds is reached…View image. The trams leave every 10 minutes and we waited approximately 15 minutes to load. The multi-passes have chips embedded along with photos and you just wave it in front of the turnstile unit.
Up the first tram to the extremely clear middle station. We’ll stop here on the way down if it stays nice (in 1993, we hiked from Chamonix to the middle station). Tram number 2, and without clouds today, the ride up showed how steep and precipitous the drop over the rocks actually is. Frightening! And beyond my comprehension how they actually managed to construct!
Walked off the tram reeling from the frigid cold and rapid ascent to an altitude of 3,777m/12,391′. Immediately went inside, took warm clothes out and put them on. It was -1 centigrade at the top even with a hot sun shining on us, and there had also been 1 cm of snow last night. Many, many Asian tour groups were busy putting on layers along with us.
Prepare to spend more than one hour making your way from terrace to terrace and enjoying the entire experience. Posing for photos in front of the Aiguille du Midi sign…View image…View image, and three Japanese ladies even asked a workman shoveling snow off the Aravis platform to be in a photo with them. It was a symphony of oohs and aahs over the entire Mont Blanc massif with each view more spectacular then the previous one.
Viewing the entire Chamonix valley, we could clearly see the ski runs of Les Houches, where we hiked yesterday…View image, the Glacier des Bossons…View image, snow capped alps as far as the eye could see…View image, and Mont Blanc, at 4,810m/15,780′, the highest mountain in Europe. There are really no words to express such beauty.
A walk through one tunnel to see what was on the Italian side and there was a line waiting for the elevator to the tippy-top observation platform, 3 Euros additional. Just as we had decided against it, an announcement was made and the elevator was shut down for some reason. Instead, a flight of stairs up to the Mont Blanc observation terrace (huffing and puffing all the way), past a gallery filled with posters and photographs describing exactly how these unbelievable trams were built and also telling about the first mountaineers and adventurers. Some of the photographs showed these beyond brave men, sitting and eating lunch with nothingness below them.
Then into the center footbridge tunnel that pointed to Helbronner cable car over to Italy. On the very little platform called Mont Blanc Terrace, men were putting on crampons, coiling ropes over shoulders…View image, and preparing to step through a little gate on into, what looked like to me, the abyss…View image…with guides for mountaineering tours. ex-Marine (Steve) talked to one man who has been guiding and leading mountaineering tours in Chamonix for 30 years. He was checking and double checking his client’s (two men) equipment and they were going to climb and stay in refuges for two nights.
We stood in the sunshine on this snowy terrace for quite a bit of time watching mountaineers making their way across the Vallee Blanche…View image, coming up and going down. My heart almost stopped when I saw the guide with his clients step through the gate onto the steep ridge, just wide enough for two feet in crampons and waited to see what would happen with two men coming up this same trajectory…View image…View image… since they had to pass each other.
The up and downers stopped to chat on this ridge with extreme and steep drops without a care in the world while ex-Marine and I had palpitations watching. The small cable car crossing the Vallee Blanche to Helbronner, Italy where people could then change for a cable car down to Courmayeur didn’t inspire confidence either. Another photo of us with Mont Blanc in the background…View image, and we headed down towards the Aiguille middle station.
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