Aiguille du Midi

The cable car from Chamonix to the Aiguille du Midi climbs to 3,842 m and is one of the highest and steepest cable cars in the world. At the top, viewing terraces overlook the Mont Blanc summit, along with the glass box Pas dans le Vide over the abyss. The station is also the starting point of the famous Vallée Blanche ski run.

Highlights

• One of the highest cable cars in the world (3,842 m)
• Glass box Pas dans le Vide (Step into the Void)
• Direct view of the Mont Blanc summit
• Access to the Vallée Blanche

Good to know

Practical info

Background & History

The “Needle of the Midday Hour” bears its name because, seen from Chamonix, the sun stands at midday roughly above this 3842-metre-high rock tooth. The mountain belongs to the Mont Blanc massif, that tremendous granite block whose highest summit was first climbed in 1786 by the crystal hunter Jacques Balmat and the doctor Michel Paccard, an event that marked the beginning of modern mountaineering. Chamonix thereby became the cradle of mountaineering, and the Aiguille du Midi moved, as a striking vantage and starting point near the roof of Europe, into the focus of interest of researchers and mountaineers.

In 1955 one of the boldest cable cars in the Alps began operating here, leading in an almost vertical second section directly to the summit rock and representing, for its time, an engineering sensation. From the platform hovering high above the valley, the view reaches across the wide glacier world to Mont Blanc, and across the ice sea of the Vallée Blanche experienced alpinists set out on demanding high tours. The station is at the same time the end point of a panorama gondola, which connects the massif across the glaciers with the Italian side. Thus the Aiguille du Midi makes a high-mountain landscape experienceable that is otherwise open only to practised mountaineers, and combines mountaineering history with technical pioneering achievement.