Contemplate
Published on
Contemplate2025 was the International Year of Glaciers. The usual — and sadly familiar — interpretation came in the form of anxiety-inducing graphs, dizzying figures, and before-and-after photos that are as heartbreaking as they are demoralising. The Chamonix Valley Tourist Office chose a different approach: to lend an ear and to invite us to listen to the mountains in a new way.
La Montagne Hallucinée
is an immersive podcast that explores the intimate, emotional, and fantastical dimensions of the Mont Blanc massif.
Created by Camille Juzeau (the voice behind Les Baladeurs for Les Others and L’Insomniaque on Arte Radio), this audio creation offers a deeply sensory immersion into the Alpine imagination. Science enters into dialogue with legends, contemporary stories intertwine with ancient myths, and forgotten archives resurface. An audio fresco where the mountain is not merely analysed, but allowed to breathe, to resonate and to whisper.
Testimonies, literary excerpts, soundscapes… Carried along by the voices of storyteller Zian des Alpes and heritage guide Bernadette Tsuda, the listener travels through time as through crevasses, between knowledge, poetry and transmission. A tribute to a living, shifting heritage. Three episodes of around twenty minutes later, La Montagne Hallucinée pulls off a rare feat: addressing glaciers, ecology and memory without ever stifling imagination.
Episode 1 – The Cursed Ice of Mont Blanc
Towards the Aiguille du Midi, 3,842 metres above sea level. As climbers set out towards the roof of Europe, glaciologist Luc Moreau observes. For forty years, he has watched the glaciers retreat, change and slowly disappear. Those masses of ice that once terrified villagers when they swallowed up entire hamlets. Glaciers that are sometimes magical, sometimes cursed — refuges for fairies or even for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Episode 2 – Haunted Nights in the Alpine Pastures
In Montroc, above Argentière, Yvane Pissart is busy on the farm. Cheeses to mature, calves to feed, bags to pack. Soon, the whole family will move up to the alpine pastures for the summer. Up there, when night falls, silence is absolute. No more neighbours, no more signal, 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 unlikely shapes. Jean-Franck Charlet, a high-mountain guide and crystal hunter, searches for them where few dare venture: in the “ovens”, those secret cavities nestled along the edges of glaciers. Initiated by his family, he keeps alive an ancient tradition, where crystals are talismans that shelter imaginary creatures and inspire extraordinary journeys — far more inward than touristic.
Find all three episodes of the podcast La Montagne Hallucinée here.
