In RS Through the Back Door, he suggests taking the Aguille du Midi from Chamonix over Mont Blanc and down into Aosta, Italy. Does anyone know how this works? How much it costs? It sounds like something I'd like to include in my trip but the Chamonix website didn't help. I will be there the end of Sept and I heard it might not even run that late into the year. Any comments on weather for the Alps that time of year would be helpful too. Thanks.
Posted by
US Pacific Northwest
10344 posts
Rick gives several pages of detailed instructions on how to do this in his book, France, in the 2008 edition it starts on page 616; it's too much info to summarize here.There have also been prior discussions of this, to retrive them, do this:go to google advanced searchin search within a site enter ricksteves.comin all these words enter helpline aostaclick searchYou asked about weather: it's notoriously difficult to predict near the mountains and depends on the elevation. Example: In late Sept in Chamonix during the warmest part of the day it might be 60, colder in the morning, but as you take the gondola to the Aiguille you'll go from 60 to 30 at the top of the lift. The reason is that Chamonix is at 3500 ft but the top of Aiguille du Midi is 9000 feet higher.
Posted by
Everett, WA
1292 posts
The Aguille Du Midi is always cold-even on bright sunny days like we had last September. I think your biggest concern could be whether the Helbronner portion is still open. We were there last week of September 2008, and it had closed for the season. This was despite the fact that the weather was the best I've ever had in 3 trips to Chamonix. If it is open, it is a spectacular trip. We did not take the lift to Aosta, but the rest was great. (We did it in 2001) It is expensive...my budget book shows we paid 74 euros for 2 to go to the top of Aguille Du Midi (at that time it was about $110). I don't recall how much more Helbronner would have been.