the Argentière glacier is equally impressive, while farther down valley the Glacier des Bossons, broad at its formation almost at the summit of Mont Blanc du Tacul and tapering below the tree-line, shows the full drama of a cascading icefall to visitors who need never leave the valley to admire its grandeur. On the south side of the range the Brenva glacier snakes down towards Entrèves, while the Glacier du Miage has bulldozed a huge wall of lateral moraine across the Val Veni.
The slopes of Le Brévent provide direct, frontal views of Mont Blanc
Mont Blanc’s glaciers have always formed a large part of the district’s appeal – especially to the non-mountaineer. In a letter dated 22 July 1816 written from Chamonix, P. B. Shelley expressed unrestrained enthusiasm for the mountains themselves (‘the immensity of these aerial summits excited ... a sentiment of ecstatic wonder, not unallied to madness’), but reserved true astonishment for the Bossons glacier and its icefall:
We saw this glacier, which comes close to the fertile plain, as we passed. Its surface was broken into a thousand unaccountable figures; conical and pyramidical crystallizations, more than fifty feet in height, rise from its surface, and precipices of ice, of dazzling splendour, overhang the woods and meadows of the vale. This glacier winds upwards from the valley, until it joins the masses of frost from which it was produced above, winding through its own ravine like a bright belt flung over the black region of the pines. There is more in all these scenes than mere magnitude of proportion: there is a majesty of outline; there is an awful grace in the very colours which invest these wonderful shapes – a charm which is peculiar to them, quite distinct even from the reality of their unutterable greatness.
Lozenge-shaped, the range follows a north-east to south-west alignment between Col Ferret and Col du Bonhomme, and stands head and shoulders above all its near neighbours. The Franco–Italian border runs along its crest, and on the summit of Mont Dolent is also joined by that of Switzerland. Around it flow seven principal valleys that effectively define is limits. Listing anti-clockwise from Chamonix, these are: the Vallée de l’Arve, Val Montjoie, Vallée des Glaciers, Val Veni, the two Vals Ferret – one Italian, the other Swiss – and the Vallée du Trient.
Vallée de l’Arve
The most important of these, in terms of size, development and tourist infrastructure, is the Vallée de l’Arve, the ‘Vale of Chamouni’. When William Windham, with Richard Pococke and several companions, entered the valley in 1741 they did so with exaggerated caution, being fully armed against what they feared would be a savage peasantry, and accompanied by servants and pack horses loaded with food and camping equipment. But on arrival in Chamonix they found it a surprisingly hospitable village and the valley well established with a public market that had already been held for some 200 years under the protection of the Dukes of Savoy. While the surrounding peaks were considered by locals to be Les Montagnes Maudites (the accursed mountains), the valley itself was devoted largely to agriculture, with sheep and goats grazing the upper pastures. Almost 20 years later de Saussure made his first visit and was suitably impressed by the ‘fresh and pure air ... the good cultivation of the soil ... the pretty hamlets ... [which] give the impression of a new world, a sort of earthly paradise ... enclosed by a kindly Deity in the circle of the mountains.’
Since Windham’s and de Saussure’s visits the valley has seen massive development. Mont Blanc has had a tunnel scored right through it to take heavy road traffic into Italy. Cableways have been strung from valley to mountain top and even across the glaciers to La Palud on the south side. Rack railways wind up hillsides and the hospitable village of Chamonix has grown into a town of major significance. It has, quite simply, become the world’s premier mountaineering centre.
The Vallée de l’Arve begins in a small cirque above Le Tour, where the Col de Balme (2191m) marks the border between France and Switzerland. A privately-owned stone-built refuge occupies prime position on the broad, grassy saddle of the col, and enjoys a magnificent view over the whole valley, with Mont Blanc and the aiguilles forming the left-hand wall and the Aiguilles Rouges a rocky crest on the right. As R. L. G. Irving once said: ‘If that view does not thrill you you are better away from the Alps.’
The tiny Lac Flégère above the Grand Balcon Sud
All the way down the valley, from Le Tour to Les Houches, glacial avenues open from the left, serving as drainage channels from the Mont Blanc heartland. First of these is the Glacier du Tour, upon whose right bank sits the Albert Premier Refuge (2702m). This very popular hut, given by the Club Alpin Belge to the CAF in 1930, is named after King Albert I of Belgium, a distinguished mountaineer who was killed in an abseiling accident in the Ardennes in 1934. The hut not only forms a base for climbers tackling peaks at this northern end of the range, but makes a worthwhile destination in itself for walkers anxious to gain a close view of the arctic world of high mountains without facing the tribulations of glacier travel. A path leads to it from Col de Balme, joining another from Le Tour shortly before the hut is reached.
Le Tour is far enough away from Chamonix to maintain an independent existence. Although small, it has both hotel and dortoir accommodation, and the neighbouring hillsides are immensely popular with skiers. The village receives more winter snowfall than any other in the French Alps, and part of its attraction to skiers is the number of cableways that now string the slopes above. As a result the summer walking potential is somewhat devalued by the existence of bare pistes and a clutter of tows and gondola lifts.
At Montroc, below Le Tour, the narrow-gauge railway from Martigny emerges from a tunnel under Col des Montets. That col, squeezed by the Aiguilles Rouges and Montagne des Posettes, provides road access from the Rhône valley in Switzerland and is heavily used. The col forms a boundary of the Aiguilles Rouges Nature Reserve, and there’s an alpine garden on either side of the road as it descends towards the Vallée de l’Arve, where the first framed views of the massif give a foretaste of things to come.
Grand Balcon Sud
The attractive little hamlet of Tré-le-Champ lies just off the Montets road; little more than a huddle of chalets, including a gîte, set in small, neat meadows and with a footpath that descends to the bed of the valley at Argentière. On the other side of the road from the hamlet a path climbs the slopes of the Aiguilles Rouges, first among pinewoods, but then out in the open to tackle a series of metal ladders fixed against a line of cliffs. Mounting these ladders is safe but exhilerating work, as there’s a degree of exposure with the valley now several hundred metres below. At the top of the ladders you emerge to a natural terrace that runs along the face of the mountain, and there join another trail that has come from Col des Montets, the junction marked by a huge cairn and fantastic views across the valley to the Mer de Glace. This trail is known as the Grand Balcon Sud, one of the most spectacular balcony walks in all the Alps, and one that has been adopted by both the Tour du Mont Blanc and the longer but less well-known Tour du Pays du Mont Blanc.
To follow the Grand Balcon Sud in its entirety from Col des Montets to Les Houches, is to sample a day or two of mountain walking at its very best. The complete walk could be achieved in a single day; a full and demanding day, it’s true, but quite feasible for a strong walker, well acclimatised to the Alps. But it’s much better to devote two days to it in order to have time to savour the panorama which takes in the full panoply of Mont Blanc’s great northern wall, its upper snows, aiguilles and snaking icefields seen across the depths of the intervening valley. Along that balcony trail it’s possible to enjoy such a panorama hour after hour as the sun drifts across the heavens and casts a new light, with new shadows, in a procession of delight from dawn to dusk. And then at night too, perhaps graced by a full moon and a sky thick with stars to add another dimension to a scene that defies description.
Where to stay? Along the balcon there’s a refuge at La Flégère which is also reached by cable-car