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You won't find me laying under the sun on a beach holiday. I love mountains and I love snow way too much for that. The higher the mountain and the deeper the snow the happier I am. And European mountains don't come much higher than Mont Blanc in the Alps. At 4810m above sea level it's the highest peak in western Europe.
Not being a mountaineer in the true sense of the word I am not equipped either physically or mentally to scale anything but the lower peaks on foot. So ascending 4000m peaks is totally out of the question for me, unless there is a cable car on hand to help out.
Fortunately there is. The Aguille Du Midi cable car takes you from Chamonix town center to a height of 3842m in around 20 minutes. Ok it's 1000m short of the Mont Blanc summit but it's as high as mere mortals such as me can get and still pretty damn high, and the views are stupendous.
At these heights altitude sickness is a real possibility and I have to confess that on my first visit I forgot, in my excitement, to allow myself time to acclimatize and felt off balance and short of breath for a while.
The last rays of the setting sun catching the highest peaks in the Mont Blanc Massive.
Image No 800-9809