…but a little shorter
The world’s longest lift-served ski run, the world-famous Vallée Blanche above Chamonix has reopened with a whole new gondola for tired skiers and boarders to use to exit the glacial ice at the end of their descent.
The Descent
The full Vallée Blanche descent takes skiers from the top station of the Aiguille du Midi cable car at 3,842m high above the famous ski town, shuffling onto the infamous arête ridge, carrying skis or boards to the start of the run itself. From here it is, potentially, a “more than 20km” off-piste run over around 2,800 vertical metres back down to Chamonix through some of the most spectacular mountain scenery on earth.
The Dangers
You are, though, skiing over the Mer de Glace glacier, with its many dangers, including hidden crevasses, so ascent in a professional guided group is essential. The reality for the vast majority of skiers, too, is that rather than ski all the way down to Chamonix, the run ends on the glacier below the historic Montenvers station and hotel. The issue is that skiing the final bit requires negotiating the boulder field at the base of the glacier and then adequate off-piste snow back to the village. It can be done if conditions are right and the skier’s skills are up to it, but for most, the end is a train ride down from Montenvers.
© Chamonix TO
What’s the problem?
The issue in recent years, though, has been getting from the glacier below at the end of the skier’s descent, up to Montenvers station. Thirty-five years ago, a gondola was built down to the ice from Montenvers station, descending just under 150m to the Mer de Glace. The problem since has been the glacier melting away below. The initial solution in the 1990s was to build a few steps for skiers to climb up to the gondola base station, but as climate change melted the ice ever faster, the number of steps grew. By last winter, skiers with weary legs ending their descent had to climb up more than 550 steps to the bottom of the gondola, carrying their gear.
The Solution!
So the solution is the new gondola this winter, which descends a little further, nearly 190m, but more importantly is located about 600m further up the glacier at its base station, so the steps are gone for now. Indeed, the Compagnie du Mont-Blanc, which built the new gondola, made exceptional efforts to minimise the environmental impact of doing so (which ended up delaying its opening by two months to late January 2024), hoping that the base location of the new lift higher up the glacier means it will last longer and new steps won’t be needed so soon, at least not by the hundred.
However, its location does mean that the Vallée Blanche descent, while still, probably, technically, the world’s longest, has become more than half-a-kilometre shorter for most skiers and boarders, thanks to climate change.
The Compagnie du Mont Blanc meanwhile says that this is the last new gondola they’ll build there, however fast the glacier melts. Their next project is a state-of-the-art Glaciorium Centre (again replacing an earlier version) that will focus on the Mer de Glace and what is happening to glaciers around the world. It will be carefully built during 2024 on the site of the old, now decommissioned gondola and will open next winter.
Images © Chamonix TO
