France Guide
The Alps and Franche-Comté
Aiguille du Midi
Opening time: May– Sept 8am–5pm; mid-Dec to April 8.30am–4.30pm
Price: €38 return, advance reservations €2; call 
08.92.68.00.67
The most famous excursion is the very expensive, and often very crammed, téléférique to the Aiguille du Midi (3842m), one of the longest cable-car ascents in the world, rising no fewer than 3000m above the valley floor in two extremely steep stages. Penny-pinching by buying a ticket only as far as the Plan du Midi is a waste of money: go all the way or not at all. If you do go up, make the effort to be on your way before 9am, as the summits tend to cloud over towards midday, and huge crowds may force you to wait for hours if you try later. Take warm clothes – even on a summer's day it'll be below zero at the top – and sunblock is also advisable to protect against the glare off the snow. You need a steady head, too: the drop beneath the little bubble of steel and glass reaches a nerve-jangling five hundred metres at one stage.
The Aiguille is an exposed granite pinnacle on which a restaurant and the téléférique dock are precariously balanced. The view is incredible. At your feet is the snowy plateau of the Col du Midi, with the glaciers of the Vallée Blanche and Géant sloping down the mountainside. From the Aiguille, the Three Monts Route takes mountaineers up the steep snowfield and exposed ridge to the summit of Mont Blanc with its final cap of ice, what Coleridge once called "thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc!" On the horizon lies rank upon rank of snow- and ice-capped monsters receding into the distance. Perhaps most impressive of all is the view from east to south, in which the Aiguille Verte, Triollet and the Jorasses, with the Matterhorn and Monte Rosa, form a cirque of needle-sharp peaks and sheer crags. After looking at these peaks, no one will be surprised that the Alps are still considered to be one of the most prestigious and most lethal of testing grounds for climbers.