Fly me to the Moon

From up here, the summits don’t look like mountains anymore. They look like the surface of a rough sea, frozen mid-wave. Ahead, a sun pulling itself, peak by peak, over the horizon. An indecent number of 4,000-metre peaks, Matterhorn and Monte Rosa greeting from afar. To our left, the Dent du Géant.

Then the moon appeared. Exactly above the platform of Punta Helbronner. Up here, at 3,462 metres, the station looks like it grew from the rock. Or like it landed.

That day, somewhere on the other side of that moon, Artemis was making its way home. We didn’t talk about that last part. We just looked.

The rotor blades were still turning. But the sound had gone somewhere else. Astronauts call it the Overview Effect – that shift when the sheer scale of what’s outside reorders everything you thought mattered inside. You don’t need to leave the atmosphere. A few thousand metres above the valley floor will do it. The noise in our heads – the list, the low-level hum of being a person – stopped fitting. We felt small. The useful kind.

The helicopter landed. And we immediately wanted to go back up.

This time differently. The cabin rotates as it climbs – the mountain turns slowly around you, showing everything. We rode up with Giulia and the team of Skyway Monte Bianco. Up here, some of the staff have been coming for longer than the new station has existed. They still look out like it’s the first time. Probably always will. Below us, Courmayeur shrank, the valley folding away.

At Punta Helbronner we stepped inside – into the crystal, properly. Large glass surfaces, angular volumes, the geology of the mountain rendered in architecture. A building that looks like it belongs to the mountain. And to no era in particular.

Out on the terrace, a stillness we recognised. The same platform where, barely an hour earlier from the air, we had watched the moon stand. Now we stood on it ourselves. Still alone.

The sounds returned. Not noise – colour. The first skiers out of the cabin, moving with the easy confidence of people who have done this before. Skis on their backs. They climbed the staircase that connects two countries without making a fuss about it, clicked in, and disappeared into the adventure below.

One last coffee. Enjoying the endless views from panoramic windows.

Then down. The cabin turning on its axis, the mountain rotating past – slowly, as if giving you time to say goodbye. Past the old bones of the Rifugio Torino, past decades of arrivals and departures, all the alpinists and dreamers who made it this far before a cable car existed to help them. Until Courmayeur came back.

We felt grounded, in every sense. Same moon, still up there.