Montenvers
Montenvers (1913 m) is a rock spur and lookout point above the Mer de Glace near Chamonix and namesake of the Chemin de fer du Montenvers , a cog railway that opened in 1909 and leads from Chamonix to the Montenvers. At the mountain station there is a hotel, a panorama restaurant, a gallery of alpine crystals and a museum about alpine fauna. A short cable car (built in 1960) leads steeply down the moraine flank from the mountain station to the Mer de Glace glacier tongue . As the glacier melted back, the valley station of this cable car is now several meters above the glacier, which can be reached on a secured path with 400 steps. On the glacier itself there is an artificial ice grotto that was created in 1946. In the ice grotto there are ice sculptures depicting alpine life in the past.
The hotel below the mountain station was built in 1880. It was renovated and modernized in 2003. After the 2016 season, it was completely renovated and rebuilt.
history
- 1741: The Englishmen William Windham (1717–1761) and Richard Pococke ascend to the Montenvers to visit the Mer de Glace.
- 1786: The Upper Lusatian nobles Adolf Traugott von Gersdorff and Karl Andreas von Meyer zu Knonow ascend to the Montenvers and there draw several views of the Mer de Glace and the Aiguille du Dru. The drawings are now kept in the Görlitz Cultural History Museum and the Upper Lusatian Library of Sciences .
- 1802: The popularity of the Montenvers as a vantage point with the increasing number of visitors (especially nobles, writers and painters) leads to the first road construction measures to make the path passable for mules .
- 1880: Construction of the Grand Hotel de Montenvers.
- May 29, 1909: Chemin de fer du Montenvers opens
- September 2016: Closure for the purpose of renovating and converting the building
- 2017 reopening
Web links
- Montenvers on the ETHorama platform
- Homepage
- Report about the hotel
Coordinates: 45 ° 55 ′ 59 ″ N , 6 ° 55 ′ 2 ″ E