Chamonix

The cable car climbs out of the valley and the pines give way to rock, then ice, then nothing but air, and Mont Blanc fills the window like a wall of granite and snow. Chamonix, in the French Alps, lies at the foot of the highest peak in western Europe, a town built on the threshold between the familiar and the extreme, and at the top of the Aiguille du Midi the air is so thin it makes you light-headed.

Chamonix-Mont-Blanc lies in a narrow valley under the Mont Blanc massif — this is where alpinism was born — the stories of the pioneers who first climbed the mountain are part of the town. The Aiguille du Midi cable car runs from the valley floor to a needle of rock at 3,842 metres, the highest cable car station in France, with a glass-floored step over the void and the start point of the Vallée Blanche descent, the long off-piste glacier descent that skiers make with a guide. The Montenvers rack railway climbs to the Mer de Glace, the largest glacier in France, and the walk down to its ice grotto gets longer every year as the glacier thins; markers on the way record where the ice stood in decades past. Five ski areas face the mountain in winter, and in summer the valley is the crossroads of the Tour du Mont Blanc, the trek that circles the massif through France, Italy and Switzerland. Weather closes the lifts without warning, and altitude is real at the top.