Télécabine de la Mer de Glace, Mountain gondola lift in Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, France

The Télécabine de la Mer de Glace is a gondola lift at Montenvers, above Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, linking the upper station at 1,908 m beside the rack railway terminus to a lower station about 580 m to the south-south-east at roughly 1,700 m. Its concrete and glass station has a curved facade with a rounded band of windows, and a grey lattice pylon carries the cables. It moves 1,500 people per hour in each direction.

A first cable car opened in 1961, but glacier flooding in the 1980s threatened its lower station, so it was dismantled and its parts reused for a gondola that opened in July 1988. As the Mer de Glace retreated, that lift was dismantled in December 2023 and replaced by the current gondola, which entered service on 3 February 2024 and was inaugurated on 18 February 2025.

The ice cave near the lower station is cut each year by the same family in the glacier, about 300 metres below the Montenvers. The site also holds shops, restaurants, a hotel and museums, and the rack railway from Chamonix carries roughly 400,000 to 500,000 people a year, mostly in summer.

The lift is normally ridden round-trip from the upper station down to the lower one, 580 metres to the south-southeast at about 1,700 metres. From the lower station, roughly a hundred steps lead up to the ice cave carved each year by the same family. A hiking trail also covers part of the drop.

The 2024 cable car was built roughly on the site of the 1961 téléphérique, which was dismantled after the glacier's 1980s surge threatened its lower station. Its lower station stands at about 1,700 m, where the Vallée Blanche ski route ends, and the ice cave is dug each year by the same family about a hundred steps above it.