Chamonix-Mont-Blanc

Few cable cars on earth deliver such a violent shift in perspective. In twenty minutes, the two-stage téléphérique lifts you from Chamonix’s alpine bustle at 1,035 metres to the needle-sharp summit of the Aiguille du Midi at 3,842 metres, where the air thins to 65 percent of sea-level oxygen and the Mont Blanc massif unfurls in a 360-degree panorama of ice and granite. The summit terraces, blasted into the rock in the 1950s, now host the “Step into the Void” — a glass-floored cage cantilevered over a 1,000-metre drop — and a cylindrical glass tube that slides you out over the void for a selfie with the roof of Western Europe. Below, the Vallée Blanche glacier snakes toward the Mer de Glace, its crevasses glowing electric blue. This is high-alpine theatre at its most accessible: no crampons required, only a warm layer and a head for heights. For mountaineers, the arête leading to the Cosmiques Hut marks the start of the classic traverse to Mont Blanc’s summit.