La Montagne hallucinée" podcast

An immersive podcast supported by the Chamonix-Mont-Blanc Valley Tourist Office

🎧 A sound creation by Camille Juzeau

Since time immemorial, the high mountains - of which Mont Blanc is the emblem - have been a place that has fertilized the imagination: an arid and dangerous space, hidden by mist and covered in snow of changing colors and textures. Mountain dwellers feared it, while travelers and scientists sought to discover it, opening up new paths and mapping this once forbidden space. Since then, many stories and legends, tales and novels, both known and forgotten, have taken place there.
This podcast invites us to rediscover these stories, whether told orally by peasants or the emblematic fictions of 18th-century writers on holiday, through the memories of those who live in the mountains today, to rediscover those of yesterday.
To mark the International Year of Glacier Preservation, La Montagne Hallucinée invites us to immerse ourselves in the Alpine imagination through three powerful stories that interweave intimate testimonies, forgotten literary texts and oral legends.

Episode 1: The cursed ice of Mont-Blanc

The Aiguille du Midi cable car leaves from the center of Chamonix and climbs to an altitude of 3,842 meters. From here, climbers can continue their ascent to the highest point in the Alps: Mont Blanc, at 4,806 meters. From the intermediate point, the Plan de l'Aiguille, glaciologist Luc Moreau describes and observes the glaciers - small, large, temperate and vertical - that have been at the top of the mountain for the past 40 years, and how they are retreating. These glaciers haunted the villagers when their tongues engulfed the hamlets, and are sometimes the refuge of fairies or creatures invented by travelers who stay there, such as Mary Shelley and her Frankenstein.

Episode 2: Haunted nights in the mountain pastures

At the Montroc farm, a few bends above the village of Argentière, Yvane has already prepared the morning's tommes with milk from her cows grazing in the surrounding fields, and is feeding the young calves just a few weeks old. Still in the valley for the winter season, she is preparing with her husband and two children to join the alpine pastures for the summer. Here, on the edge of the human world, is a world of silence, where domesticated and wild animals reign, and, at nightfall, mountain spirits.

Episode 3: Crystal Songs

Behind the display case lie white and black quartz, clusters of astonishing shapes, and precious pink tourmalines from Jean-Franck Charlet's personal collection. Each one has its own story: they were sought out, then picked from the mountainside, in the heights of the surrounding valley - like treasures. Jean-Franck knows how to unearth these almost inaccessible "ovens" at the edge of glaciers, having been introduced to them as a child by his father, mother and grandfather before them. These crystals are said to be the treasures or shelters of fairies, beings that crystal-makers know how to recognize... and greet. They populate their dreams and inspire extraordinary journeys, such as the one George Sand recounted in Laura, or the journey through crystal.

With the participation of:
Luc Moreau, glaciologist
Yvane Pissart, breeder at Montroc farm
Jean-Franck Charlet, high-mountain guide and crystal-maker
Zian des Alpes, storyteller
Bernadette Tsuda, heritage guide

Why this project?

Ever since the first tourist expeditions in 1741, the Chamonix-Mont-Blanc Valley has been making history. This is where modern mountaineering was born, where mountain tourism took shape, and where the first Winter Olympics were held over a century ago. It's also here that technical feats have pushed back the limits of the impossible, where altitude sports have been reinvented, and where great literary accounts have drawn their inspiration. Energy, pioneering spirit, commitment: these values are rooted in the region's DNA, nurturing a strong identity that's always on the move. The Chamonix-Mont-Blanc Valley Tourist Office is committed to promoting cultural, environmental and heritage initiatives on a daily basis. With this new podcast, it weaves sensitive links between collective memory, nature and living heritage, so that each traveler in turn becomes a player in this human and alpine adventure.