Gondola rides across the glaciers of Mont Blanc.

The international gondola ride across the glaciers next to Mont Blanc turned out to be even more of a sublime experience than expected. We were suspended hundreds of feet over a pale white landscape where the weather patterns depositing the snow and the movement and cracking of the glaciers were fully evident. Individual humans made tiny imprints on the vast snowy expanse, winding their way around the deadly fissures in the glacier or climbing up nearby peaks.

Mont Blanc was first climbed in the late 1700s, much earlier than most other famous peaks. Now the mountain is within reach of even relatively new mountaineers, especially with a gondola taking you 80% of the way up. Apparently this leads to both a tremendous number of people attempting to climb it (20,000 a year!) and a large number of fatalities from inexperience.

I learned that mountaineering-speedflying is a popular sport here. You spend the morning climbing up some peak or high plateau from the gondola station to get to a small flat area, and then use a small paraglider to fly back down instead of descending on foot. I did the version of this that matched my complete lack of mountaineering skill or equipment, specifically taking the gondola to the top and then halfway down so I could launch on solid ground instead of a slippery field of cracking ice.