Chamonix: Mer de Glace

Today we are off to see the Mer de Glacé, or “Sea of Ice.” It comes off Mont Blanc and is not quite five miles long and is more than 600 feet deep. It’s the second longest glacier in the Alps; the Aetsch Glacier in Switzerland is approximately 14 miles long.

The train station is a fair distance from our hotel so we catch a small bus that will drop us nearby. On the way, though, we have a good clear day and get a good photo of Mont Blanc from in front of our hotel It’s the somewhat rounded peak in the middle of the photo.

From the bus, we walk over to the station. We purchased tickets yesterday that are good for two days and allow us to ride the train as well as the cable car to the Midi.

We travel to see the glacier on the Montenvers Cogwheel Train.

This railway has been operating since 1908.

It has a steep climb and we look across the valley on the way up.

Once at the upper station, we look at the glacier.

This sign shows our current altitude.

Looking to the left we see this mountain with several waterfalls coming down from melting snow.

The glacier averages about 660 feet thick and each year an Ice cave is carved so visiters can go inside the glacier. When we were here in 2014, we missed a chance to see the ice cave because we ran out of time. So this trip, we wanted to check it out. First step is to take the gondola down towards the glacier.

So we do that.

After leaving the gondola, however, you still have to navigate nearly 500 metal steps down to the ice cave. Ross and I completed about half of these and then questioned what we were doing. Going down was one thing, climbing back up another. And we had been inside a glacier before in Switzerland.

We were still jet-lagged, and struggling with altitude, and more than a decade older than when we were here before, so we stopped and just looked down at the ice cave. And now it’s covered in insulation to help reduce the amount of melting that occurs each summer. We thought this was notable because in checking on a trip to Iceland three years ago, there was an incident where an ice cave there collapsed, trapping some tourists.

You can see the size of the person walking towards the entrance and therefore how far up we still were. So the younger contingent visits the ice cave. Back at the top we check out the Glaciorium.

It’s a very small museum but has photos of several glaciers throughout the world and various features of glaciers. One feature which is very noticeable in the Mer de Glace is called Forbes Bands. These light and dark striations are caused by changes in the ablation rate and flow of the glacier and apparently the darker ridges form during summer when more melt might occur and the light areas during snowfall in winter. And because the glacier tends to move slightly faster in the middle, the stripes appear convex.

There is also a small hotel here, the Refuge du Montenvers. Built in 1880, it has about 20 rooms available. The photo below is from when we were here in 2014.

There is also a small gift shop and cafe. Ross and I plan to go back by cog train, but Jim and Emily decide to follow a hiking trail that will take them across the mountain and over to the Plan d’Aguille to catch the cable car back down. It’s a two-hour hike and they purchase a sandwich to eat on the way.

Another photo of their hike which was mostly uphill.

Tom and Cindy took the same hike in 2014 at almost the same time in June.

In the meantime, Ross and I hop on the little red cogwheel train for the 20 minute ride back down. After a short wait, the small bus comes by to take us back near the hotel. It drops us off near this house with the beautiful flowers.