The Skyway of Mont Blanc, a cableway that combines human genius and spectacle of nature.
I look up and feel miniscule before the stone giants of Mont Blanc, the highest peak in Europe; true, impressive, miracle of nature. While buying tickets for Skyway I cannot help but admire the immense courage of the man who has been able to realize such an extraordinary feat of engineering.
This futuristic cableway, inaugurated in 2015, rises from the village of Courmayeur up to 3500 meters at Punta Helbronner. Modern aerodynamic cabins, true jewels of design and technology, rotate through 360 degrees and allow you to admire an exceptional landscape that changes from moment to moment. As the village becomes a tiny speck farther and farther away, the slopes of the mountains welcome me, first with the intense green of the pastures and then with the stony rocks smashed by the glaciers that descend towards the valley.
The intermediate station of the Pavillon du Mont Fréty offers several attractions such as a high-altitude wine cellar (where the classic Vallée d'Aoste DOC Blanc de Morgex sparkling wine is produced), two restaurants, a conference room and a shopping area. The modern architectural structure of wood and glass provides a total view of the magnificent outdoor panorama, while outside the extraordinary Saussurea Botanical Garden awaits me: what in winter is buried by at least five meters of snow, offers, during the summer, a colorful panorama of alpine plants of incredible rarity.
If you then climb up to Punta Helbronner, Mont Blanc appears in all its grandiose beauty: it seems to cross through the doors of a new world when you enter the panoramic terrace that leads to the "roof of Europe" where the blue of the sky melts with the white of perennial glaciers.
The snow-capped peaks are like a majestic amphitheater, from the Dente del Gigante to the crest of Peuterey up to the glacial circle of Brenva.
Finding the right words to describe this incredible experience is not easy ... between the clouds and the ice, surrounded by a breathtaking panorama which seems to touch the sky, you see and experience nature in all its immensity.