Vallée Blanche – World’s longest ski run more accessible than ever

Patrick Thorne was in Chamonix last winter, where gondolas were the talk of the wash house.

The world’s longest lift-served ski run, the Vallée Blanche, needs little introduction. Part of its infamous appeal is that it’s not reserved for experts – anyone who can ski a red run with reasonable competence can do it. However, for the first two months of last season, it was a tough ask for most recreational skiers to attempt.

The issue was that the new gondola, scheduled to begin operations in early December 2023 – which most skiers tackling the famous run will use to exit the Mer de Glace glacier after their descent – suffered delays and couldn’t open, while the old gondola lift it replaced had already been decommissioned.

So, the only options at the end of the run were either climbing out on a challenging via ferrata (while wearing ski boots and carrying skis), or negotiating the boulder field at the base of the glacier and skiing down to Chamonix – if valley snow was adequate.

The new gondola finally opened in January 2024. Now, the main concern is that the much easier exit from the glacier may lead to guides attempting to take two groups a day down the Vallée Blanche, rather than one, potentially leading to overcrowding and exacerbating glacier erosion. Time will tell.

In recent years, due to the diminishing glacier, skiers have had to tackle over 500 stairs from the end of the descent before taking the old gondola up to the Montenvers train station for a journey back to Chamonix. Part of a €53m project, the huge new gondola is being installed 600m further up the glacier, creating direct access from the glacier to Montenvers.

The Compagnie du Mont Blanc lift company has made exceptional efforts to minimise the environmental impact of the new construction project, including using temporary lifts to bring in materials and constructing cleaner, greener concrete on site. These efforts have made costs much higher than if they were using conventional practices and helicopters, and also led to the delay in the new gondola starting operations.

The Vallée Blanche is the most famous off-piste descent in the world and attracts tens of thousands of skiers each winter. It can be tackled by skiers of intermediate standard or higher, but skiing with a guide is essential as most winters see accidents, including deaths, due to skiers falling into crevasses.

The full descent from the Aiguille du Midi back down to Chamonix is around 23 km (14.5 miles) long and descends approximately 2,800 vertical metres. However, most skiers end their run below Montenvers after about 17 km (11 miles) and 2,300 vertical metres, as below here there is a glacial debris field at the end of the glacier, and snow cover down to Chamonix can be incomplete.

The run is also one of the world’s most visible illustrations of climate change, as the Mer de Glace glacier is melting fast and the level of the ice has dropped over a hundred vertical metres below Montenvers over the past 30 years.

When the original gondola linking Montenvers to the glacier opened in 1998, it reached directly down to the ice. However, as the years went by, a few steps needed to be added from the base of the gondola to the glacier. By the early 2000s, 118 steps were needed. By last year, the melting process had accelerated so much that 550 steps were required between the glacier and the old gondola base station.

The new gondola will mean no more steps initially, but project manager Benoit Borrel says this will be the last gondola, and that as the ice continues to retreat in the future, visitors will just have to adapt their habits.

For more info, head to chamonix.net