Mont Blanc, France

Perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime excursion, riding Chamonix's series of cablecar lifts from the town at 3,400 feet to Mont Blanc's Aiguille du Midi at 12,600 feet and then switching to the panoramic Mont Blanc gondola for a flight out and back over the Glacier du Geant to Point Helbronner some 1,500 feet lower than the Midi takes one's breath away, literally. During the sparkling trip the massive Mont Blanc at 15,800 feet slides by as the centerpiece of the 3-mile aerial traverse.
The above photo shows a glimpse of one of the massive glaciers slowly descending from its peak, and of hardy climbers roped together and trudging up and down the ice looking much like penguins. Indeed, the more we looked the more climbers we found clinging to various precipices and cravasses. Some had been there for some time, camping out in tents dug into the glacier and deeply pinned down. As we watched the slow and purposeful pace of all those summer adventurers, we began gasping for air as if to help them in their wracking climbs.
All the scenery and the perch for the three climbers in the second photo has been provided by the separation of Italy from northern Africa and its slow collision with Europe, pushing up the great arc of the Alps, much like one makes folds in a tablecloth by pushing on it with one's finger. In its course across the ancient Mediterranean sea floor, Italy scraped up sea sediments and folded once-flat sea rocks into the vertical shards shown here. These massive shards break down from the constant freeze and thaw of much ice and provide a constant rain of dust and rock bits that then ride the glaciers to their jumbled termini half way down the mountain, as shown below in the photo of the descending Mer de Glace.
As we rode back down the dizzying drop, the Chamonix valley spread out below us, showing the characteristic round bottom of a valley carved out by still greater glaciers during one or more of the last glacial periods. At the Plan de L'Aigulle, or just above the tree line, we finally caught our breath, just in time to be dropped almost straight down to our starting point and a much anticipated beer.