Section 5 of 7
Engineering
Tunnels, dams, cables and galleries — the works cut into the range, and what they changed.
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The Aiguille du Midi Cable Car and What It Required
The 1955 completion of the Aiguille du Midi téléphérique — two spans, the intermediate station at Plan de l'Aiguille, the summit station at 3,842 m (IGN) cut into the pinnacle itself. A walk-through of the engineering problem and the solution, with dated construction figures.
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Engineering
Every June a Machine Goes Up and Cuts the Road Out of the Snow
The high passes of the Maurienne do not open: they are opened, by hand and machine, every year without exception.
Engineering
The River That Powered the Valley It Runs Through
The hydroelectric infrastructure of the Arc and Isère — the dams, the installed capacity, the relationship between gradient and generation potential.
Engineering
What an Avalanche Gallery Is For
The snow gallery as a structural engineering answer to a documented problem on specific Maurienne road sections — what the gallery covers, what its roof must bear and how the design has evolved since the first installations.
Engineering
Desgrange Sent the Race Over the Road to Prove the Road Existed
A long argument about the Tour de France's relationship to Savoyard road infrastructure — the 1911 Galibier stage as proof that an improbable road was passable, Desgrange's monument, the Alpe d'Huez hairpin count and the stage-finish dates as a dated record of which climbs the race used and when.