Avian’s Blog

Speaking of French engineering achievements, here's another one: Aiguille du Midi is an inaccessible tower of rock in the middle of snow, ice and granite. With buildings and walkways on the top. And a cable car that brings you to them from the valley below in some 15 minutes.

This is even more impressive when you get to know that the first version was built before helicopters and that the heavy steel cable was brought up on foot. You can see and feel the huge difference in height from the cable car when it rises almost vertically at the top end of the catenary.

Going to 3800 m above the sea level was an interesting experience by itself. This is most likely far the highest place on Earth I'll ever stand on. Before going on the cable car I did question the safety of making an altitude gain of 2800 m in a couple of minutes without leaving some time for the body to accommodate. Then I saw hordes of other tourists going in and coming back without any doubts in their minds.

While the experience is obviously survivable, the thin air on the top does make climbing 10 steps feel like you're going 10 floors up. It certainly makes you respect people that come this far on their own feet.

And question the sanity of bringing that many tourists there.