Karinsmiles

Day 5 – Flying without wings

We were first down to breakfast … and that was at 8am after a long lie in. The standard rifugio breakfast is bread, jam and coffee so we took full advantage of the massive spread in the hotel: ham, cheese, various types of bread, jam, butter, honey, toast, juice, joghourt, fruit, fruit tart…

Our plan for this ‘rest’ day was to take the gondola up to Punta Helbronner then go across to the Aiguile du Midi on the Panoramique. We were hoping for good weather at Courmayeur because the Panoramique is highly dependant on good conditions and only runs about one day in four during high season.

The cable from La Palud goes up in three stages. The first gondola holds lots of people but runs every 20 minutes, the second stage is smaller and more frequent and the last one only holds half a dozen people but rus every few minutes. We didn’t stop at any of the stages on the way up and then we had to cross from Italy into France to go on the Panoramique.

What can I say about the panoramique to do it justice? It surpassed all my expectations, though I’m not sure what I did expect. The ‘flight’ over the glaciers was the high point of our trip. The gondolas run slow enough for you to take in everything – the endless glaciers below us, jagged aiguilles, rock seracs, mountaineers crossing crevasses over snow bridges, a view that seemed to stretch forever in the incredibly clear air. It really was like slow-speed flying.

The cabins are attached to the cable in groups of three, so there are 5 points on the trip where they just stop while they load or unload more cabins at the two ends. At these times we looked across to te cabins going the other direction and they were bouncing quite far up and down. Of course on the way back we realised we had been too, but the motion is so smooth it’s not disturbing at all. Both our camera batteries started to fail, so I put mine away and just enjoyed the trip. The reurn rip across the ice cost €20 and I think it was the best of the whole trip (surprisingly, the return to Punta Helbronner was €36 and the fares for the French ascent are considerably dearer, but the trip is definitely worth every cent from either side.

I think I had expected cables strung out across pylons running across the Mont Blanc massif, and I did think that would be completely crazy. But of course it would also be impossible because you couldn’t build structures like that on glaciers. Instead, the cable is suspended from each end, with a pair of lateral suspended pylons maintaining tension close to the Italian end. In fact the cable climbs slightly from Punta Helbronner at 3462m to the French side, slightly below the Aiguille du Midi at 3777m.

We stayed at the Aiguille du Midi for some time, watching climbers, taking photos, glad that we had brought gloves, hats and thermal tops, even in the brilliant sunshine, but eenually we decided we should head back to Italy while the queues were still small. The return trip was every bit as good as the outward one and we stopped at all the gondola stations on the Italian side for a look round. The Italian side was less busy and considerably more laid back, with families enjoying themselves having picnics.

Rifugio Torino is the station below Helbronner but the refuge itself is actually connected to the cable station by a covered arcade of very steep metal steps, which looks and feels almost vertical, particularly in the thinner air above 3000 metres. There were lots of climbers at the refuge and we were really envious of some of them that were clearly novices, going out on the glaciers with guides and identical hired kit.

The trip seemed almost as tiring as walking and we did still have a couple of miles to walk back down to Courmayeur, in heavy boots and wearing too many clothes for the sun in the valley, so we had a siesta when we got back to the hotel (everything shuts until later in the afternoon anyway, presumably everyone else is having a snooze as well). The bad news was that the sports shop didn’t have any insoles, the good news was that I managed to get a pair of gel pads to fit under my toes from a pharmacy (also €20, but very good value if they saved my feet).

Tomorrow we’re back on the trail, I hope it’s not a let-down after the trip across the big white mountain.