no single viewpoint, accessible to all who can afford a ticket on the cable-car, will be found that better displays the full majesty of Mont Blanc than that of Le Brévent. The cable-car rises from Chamonix via Plan Praz and deposits visitors to within a few paces of the 2525 metre summit, while the walker, progressing along the Grand Balcon Sud, comes to that same viewpoint but on foot from La Flégère by way of Plan Praz and Col du Brévent. Snow often lies deep on the col and across its approaches until long after mid-summer. Otherwise there’s nothing difficult about the route, although the descent from Le Brévent to the bed of the valley just below Les Houches uses an exceptionally steep path that will have tired legs straining all the way.
Grand Balcon Nord
There’s no balcony path of equivalent length along the Mont Blanc side of the valley. Paths there are, in plenty, but the intervening glaciers effectively get in the way of a continuous route from one end to the other. The Grand Balcon Nord is the best option, but this is interrupted by the projection of the Mer de Glace above Le Lavancher.
The Mer de Glace is always worth a visit despite the crowds, despite two centuries and more of it being one of the sites to see whilst staying in Chamonix or one of its satellite resorts, for nothing can devalue the view along that snaking river of ice to the dramatically impressive Grandes Jorasses, nor of the great peaks on either side. Following his visit, Windham wrote to a friend about ‘the tops (which) being naked and craggy rocks, shoot up immensely high; something resembling old Gothic buildings or ruins ...’ Early visitors were escorted there by guides using mules to convey the famous, the infamous, the unfit and the delicate. Then in 1908 the Montenvers railway was opened and mule-tours went into rapid decline. Nowadays the rack-railway does a steady business throughout the summer, while the footpath alternative climbs above Chamonix along a pleasant route through larchwoods, crossing and recrossing the tracks on the way.
At Montenvers a large hotel-refuge complex has accommodation in beds and dortoirs. Formerly one of the major starting points for climbs within the heart of the range, the opening of the cableway to the Aiguille du Midi has taken much of the pressure off, although it still features as an important staging post on the way to a number of climbers’ huts higher up.
For the walker Montenvers not only provides a grandstand view of an impressive array of mountains and shapely aiguilles that rise alongside and at the head of the glacier, it also gives an opportunity to join the Grand Balcon Nord as it climbs in zig-zags to the viewpoint of the Signal (or Signal Forbes, 2198m) where, from a northern spur of the Frêtes des Charmoz, the Aiguilles Verte and Drus look especially fine on the opposite side of the Mer de Glace.
The Grand Balcon Nord heads south-west below the Aiguilles des Grandes Charmoz, Blaitière and Plan to the small Refuge du Plan de l’Aiguille. Beyond this the path makes its steep descent to Chamonix, although the middle station of the Aiguille du Midi cableway is easily reached from the refuge in the event of bad weather demanding a speedy return to the valley.
Chamonix
As has already been noted, Chamonix has become the world’s most important mountaineering centre. Those who have known it a long time may mourn its seemingly unchecked growth, but truth is, the town has never been slow to respond to the whims of visitors, and its attraction to skiers in winter as well as to climbers, walkers and coachloads of casual tourists in summer, continues year on year. Yet we may imagine that de Saussure, who stands alongside Balmat in the square with his eyes trained on the summit of Mont Blanc, and who above all was responsible for drawing attention to its appeal, would not be entirely saddened by what has happened to Chamonix. It is, after all, a simple love of mountains that is being exploited.
The town spills down valley where the little Lac des Gaillands reflects the snows of Mont Blanc through a frieze of conifers. Behind the tarn rock slabs are invariably dotted with climbers, while below them a woodland path leads gently along the valley to the railway station at Les Houches. Thereafter the Vallée de l’Arve narrows and twists north-westward, before curving once more to lose its immediate hold on Mont Blanc and the glaciers as it broadens below St-Gervais-les-Bains.
St-Gervais, however, retains more than a passing interest in Mont Blanc, for it is from Le Fayet just below the town that the Tramway du Mont Blanc begins its ambitious ascent via Col de Voza to Nid d’Aigle overlooking the Glacier de Bionnassay. Opened in 1912, the original intention had been to push the ‘tramway’ to the very summit of Mont Blanc! From Nid d’Aigle a trail climbs to Refuge de la Tête Rousse (3167m). Another leads to the glacier’s moraine, then down to a little meadowland from where assorted paths lead either to Bionnassay and the Val Montjoie, to Les Contamines on the route of the Tour of Mont Blanc, or back to St-Gervais by way of Col de Voza. Just above Col de Voza, at Bellevue, a cableway arrives from Les Houches, thereby enabling walkers based in the lower part of the Vallée de l’Arve to gain a variety of routes without facing a long approach march.
Walkers on the path that descends from Plan de l’Aiguille to Chamonix
The Bon Nant flows through St-Gervais before joining the Arve at Le Fayet. This river, less flamboyant but in some ways lovelier than the Arve, drains the second of our seven valleys, the Val Montjoie which forms the western extremity of the Mont Blanc range.
Val Montjoie
The valleys of Montjoie and l’Arve could hardly be more different. Whilst the Arve is crowded with mountains, buildings and people, Val Montjoie gives a sense of space, of unfussed forests and open pastureland. There’s development, of course, and mechanical aid strung about some of the hillsides, but this western end of the massif is comparatively untouched. And yet in Roman times it was one of the busiest of high Alpine valleys, for the Roman road linking Gaul with Valle d’Aosta ran through it, and sections of that ancient paved route may still be seen today above the chapel of Notre Dame de la Gorge.
Despite the Trélatête and Bionnassay glaciers, and the smaller icefields hanging beneath the Dômes de Miage, there’s far less ice draining into Val Montjoie than into the Arve. Where the valley begins, in a cirque above the chalets of La Balme, there is no ice or permanent snowfield of any size. Col du Bonhomme (2329m) lies among stony heights, but below it a grassy basin is wound about with streams, one of which spills from the lovely Lacs Jovet under Mont Tondu.
This part of the valley is protected as a nature reserve, and those with a taste for such country could spend several worthwhile days exploring a clover-leaf of hanging valleys and a number of passes of varying degrees of difficulty, from a base at La Balme. There’s a chalet-refuge here with views up to the Aiguilles de la Pennaz and the Roches Franches that wall the glen to the south-west. A little lower in the valley the Chalet Nant Borrant makes another good base on the edge of woodland.
Les Contamines-Montjoie
The little resort of Les Contamines-Montjoie is the most obvious centre in Val Montjoie. The village is terraced on the right bank of the river where most of the hotels are located, but there’s camping and gîte accommodation on the opposite side at Nivorin. Here the valley is green and pastoral. Skiing is enjoyed on slopes to the south-west where Col du Joly marks a saddle between Aiguille Croche and Aiguille de Roselette, but there are other hillsides where there’s been no intrusion by piste-making machines, and footpaths seduce the inquisitive walker onto upper slopes and ridgetops with far-flung views. One such is Mont Joly (2525m) to the west of Les Contamines.
A little to the north of the village the ascent of this shaly mountain begins on the left bank of the Bon Nant near La Chapelle. There a path tacks to and fro up the hillside and tops the ridge at Mont Geroux (2288m). Below, and to the north-west, Refuge-Pavillon du Mont Joly (2002m) provides overnight accommodation and refreshments. From Mont Geroux the way
