Mont Blanc massif destablilized by summer heatwaves and rockfalls

Behind the turnstile lies another world. At the 3,842-meter summit of the Aiguille du Midi in Chamonix, in France’s Haute-Savoie department, a light barrier topped with a “no entry” sign and a skull separates the world of hot chocolate and Mont Blanc selfies from the ice fields and rocky terrain of the high mountains.

At the arrival point of the Aiguille du Midi cable car, at the very end of the gallery leading to the Rébuffat terrace, David Gladwin and Ethan Footer, each with a helmet and carabiner on their belt and a rope over their shoulder, prepared to cross the symbolic threshold to reach the Italian summits on Tuesday, August 18. “It’s one outing still possible in an exceptional summer that has greatly limited our climbs,” summarized Gladwin, a 46-year-old Briton who has been a mountain guide in Chamonix for 15 years.

At the beginning of August, their crampons would not have scraped the concrete. They would have geared up inside the ice tunnel, an airlock that, for more than a decade, had served as a changing room before facing the elements. Battered by the sun and deemed too unstable, it was cut apart with a chainsaw by the Compagnie du Mont-Blanc, the company that operates the cable car. This was one of the many consequences of the six cumulative weeks since June during which the 0°C isotherm, the altitude at which freezing temperatures begin, climbed to between 4,200 and 4,500 meters. According to calculations by MétéoSuisse, Switzerland’s national weather service, the August average between 1991 and 2020 was 3,800 meters.

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