Contemplate
Published on
Contemplate2025 was the International Year of Glaciers. The (sadly) usual translation: anxiety-inducing graphs, dizzying figures, and before/after photos that are heartbreaking and demoralising. The Chamonix Valley Tourist Office chose a different approach: to listen, and to invite us to experience the mountains in a new way.
La Montagne Hallucinée
An immersive podcast that delves into the intimate, sensitive, and fantastical aspects of the Mont Blanc massif.
Created by Camille Juzeau (the voice behind Les Baladeurs de Les Others and L’Insomniaque on Arte Radio), this audio creation offers a sensory immersion into the Alpine imagination. Science engages in dialogue with legends, contemporary narratives intersect with ancient myths, and forgotten archives resurface. An audio fresco where the mountain is not merely analysed but allowed to breathe, vibrate, and whisper.
Testimonies, literary excerpts, soundscapes… Carried away by the voices of storyteller Zian des Alpes or heritage guide Bernadette Tsuda, the listener traverses eras as if through crevasses, between knowledge, poetry, and transmission. A tribute to a living and evolving heritage. Three episodes, each of about twenty minutes, La Montagne Hallucinée (The Hallucinated Mountain) achieves a rare feat: discussing glaciers, ecology, and memory without ever stifling the imagination.
Episode 1 – The Cursed Ice of Mont Blanc
Heading towards the Aiguille du Midi, 3,842m high. As the climbers ascend towards the roof of Europe, glaciologist Luc Moreau observes. For 40 years, he has watched the glaciers retreat, change, and disappear. These masses of ice that once terrified villagers when they engulfed entire hamlets. Glaciers are sometimes magical, sometimes cursed, refuges for fairies or for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
Episode 2 – Haunted Nights in the Alpine Pastures
In Montroc, above Argentière, Yvane Pissart is busy at the farm. Cheeses to age, calves to feed, luggage to pack. Soon, the whole family will head up to the alpine pastures for the summer. Up there, when night falls, the silence is absolute. No more neighbours, no more phone service, just the animals—domesticated and wild—the wind… And the spirits of the mountain. A world on the edge of the visible, where the imagination reclaims its territory.
Episode 3 – Crystal Dreams
White and black quartz, precious pink tourmalines, mineral clusters in improbable shapes. Jean-Franck Charlet, a high-mountain guide and crystal hunter, seeks them where few venture: in the "ovens," those secret cavities nestled at the edge of glaciers. Initiated by his family, he perpetuates an ancient tradition, where crystals are talismans that shelter imaginary creatures and inspire extraordinary journeys—far more introspective than touristic.
Find all 3 episodes of the podcast The Hallucinated Mountain here.
