Mont Blanc
Four thousand eight hundred and six metres, and from this side it is all vertical.
Mont Blanc is the highest mountain in the Alps, and the Italian side is the steep one: from Courmayeur, at twelve hundred metres, the wall rises three thousand six hundred metres within a few horizontal kilometres. That is why from here the mountain looks bigger than from Chamonix, where the slope is gentler.
At its foot open two parallel valleys, Val Veny and Val Ferret, which are driven up to a point and then walked. They are the two places from which to look at the Grandes Jorasses, the Brenva glacier and the Dent du Geant, and in summer they run shuttle buses because the roads close to private traffic.
The Skyway
The Skyway Monte Bianco cable car, opened in 2015, climbs from Pontal d'Entreves to Punta Helbronner in two stages, with cabins that rotate as they rise. The middle station, at the Pavillon, has an alpine botanical garden at two thousand metres; the top one stands at 3,466 metres and looks onto the Giant glacier. Buy the ticket online and take the first run.
On foot and camping
The Tour du Mont Blanc, the trek that circles the whole massif in eleven days across Italy, France and Switzerland, crosses Val Ferret and passes through Courmayeur: many do it in stages, sleeping in huts. For a single day's walking there are the Mont Blanc path along Val Veny and the climb to the Bertone hut.
The campsites are in Val Veny and around Courmayeur, open in summer and winter. At night, even in August, the temperature drops a good deal: you need a real sleeping bag, not a sheet.