SkyWay - Mont Blanc Series (Aosta Valley, Italy)

Skyway Monte Bianco is a cable car in the Italian Alps, linking the town of Courmayeur with Pointe Helbronner on the southern side of the Mont Blanc massif. Taking over three years to construct, it opened in 2015 at a cost of 110 million euros, and is considered to be the world's most expensive cable car installation.

From the cablecar base station at Entrèves (at an altitude of 1,300 meters above sea level), the Skyway Monte Bianco rises to a mid-way station at Pavillon Du Mont-Frety at an altitude of 2,173 meters. It takes six minutes to reach this point, during which time the 80-person cabin makes one complete rotation, giving visitors all-round views into the Aosta valley and along both Val Veny and Val Ferret, as well as improved access to the Italian side of the Mont Blanc massif and a link via the Vallée Blanche Aerial Tramway to the Aiguille du Midi, from where a separate cable car descends to the town of Chamonix in France.

The half-way station of the Pavillon contains a restaurant and conference centre, plus one of the highest botanical gardens in the region, containing some 900 alpine plant species, as well as access to a network of trails. Visitors can continue upwards via a second cable car which also slowly revolves, and takes ten minutes to reach Pointe Helbronner (known as the Eagles Nest) at an altitude of 3,466 meters. Tourist facilities and scenic viewpoints provide close views of Mont Blanc, Aiguille d'Entrèves and the Vallée Blanche, but also views further out towards the Matterhorn, Monte Rosa and Gran Paradiso. A tunnel and lift system provide access from the cable car terminus to the Torino Hut, a high-altitude mountain refuge offering accommodation both to tourists and to climbers intending to access the mountaineering routes of the range.

In 2016, Skyway Monte Bianco was used as the setting for an action-adventure sequence in a major comedy spy movie Kingsman: The Golden Circle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLxYUGDjzv4