Aiguille du Midi

The glass box opens and there is nothing beneath your feet but a thousand metres of empty air, the granite of the Aiguille dropping straight to the Chamonix valley. The Aiguille du Midi, above Chamonix in France's Haute-Savoie, is altitude made visceral — 3,842 metres, reached by a cable car that crosses the void without a single pylon on its upper stage, delivering you to terraces where Mont Blanc fills the sky.

The Aiguille du Midi is a granite needle at the edge of the Mont Blanc massif, and the cable car that climbs it from Chamonix, built in 1955, rises in two stages — the second across a long unsupported span — to 3,842 metres — nearly four thousand metres up by cable car. At the top are the terraces and the Panoramic Mont-Blanc gondola across the glacier, the Step into the Void glass box on the south face, restaurants, and the view: the summit of Mont Blanc close enough to read, the Matterhorn and the whole western Alps beyond. In winter the Aiguille is the start of the Vallée Blanche, the twenty-kilometre glacier descent to Chamonix through the séracs of the Mer de Glace, skied roped with a guide. The lift books out in summer, so reserve; the weather closes it without warning; and at nearly four thousand metres the altitude is real — go up slowly and give it time.