In front of the entrance to the ice cave, a man was shoveling before the influx of visitors. Antoine Claret-Tournier, 34, works as a "grotto keeper." At the Compagnie du Mont-Blanc, he is responsible for digging and maintaining a 165-meter labyrinth excavated inside the glacier.

Every year, like Sisyphus pushing his boulder, he digs a new cave using a small tunnel-boring machine – a four-month job. In 2023, the structure melted too quickly and didn't even last the entire season. A new one had to be built faster than planned. For the moment, there's no question of giving up as visitors to the Mer de Glace eagerly await the grotto. That year, 450,000 people visited this major tourist site in Haute-Savoie, in the French Alps. For €38, they traveled from Chamonix on a vintage red train (commissioned in 1909) and then took a gondola to the base of a glacier nestled between two mountainsides. People from all around the world meet here. On the day of our visit, April 2, 2024, there were French people from all regions, as well as Americans, Argentinians, Spaniards and Chinese tourists.

'New steps added every year'

There might also be even more visitors in the years to come because, since February, a new gondola lift has changed the site's accessibility. Faster and with greater capacity, this €23 million lift avoids the interminable 600-step staircase that used to be used (in both directions!) to reach the foot of the glacier.

"For the elderly and children, it had become very complicated. As the glacier was melting, we had to add new steps every year. We decided to relocate the gondola, so as to have more years of operation ahead of us," explained Stéphane Seux, director of the Montenvers site, operated by Compagnie du Mont-Blanc.

From now on, access will be more comfortable, with a greatly reduced number of steps. "It will also be much more comfortable for skiers from the Vallée Blanche, who end their journey here. We'll be able to do more rotations," added Pierre Schropff of the Compagnie des Guides du Mont-Blanc, who accompanied two Americans up this legendary Chamonix off-piste run that day.

Yet there's something paradoxical, even slightly morbid, about organizing thousands of visitors to a site whose disappearance has been announced. After all, the Mer de Glace is one of the tourist destinations where climate change is most visible. The glacier is melting at an alarming rate. Since 1991, it has lost more than 100 meters at the train station's level.

'Memories don't match'

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