Mont Blanc

Mont Blanc is a giant snowy mountain in Europe.

It is the tallest mountain in the Alps. Its top is round and white all year. Its name means white mountain. France is on one side and Italy is on the other.

Mont Blanc is the highest peak in the Alps. It is part of a big group of mountains, the Mont Blanc massif, which lies along the border between France and Italy and reaches into Switzerland. The massif is about 40 kilometers long and up to 16 kilometers wide, with sharp peaks such as the Aiguille du Midi, the Grandes Jorasses and Mont Maudit.

Glaciers cover about 100 square kilometers of the massif. Britannica explains that this is where the name comes from: Mont Blanc means white mountain. The French town of Chamonix lies in the valley to the west, and the valley of Courmayeur lies to the east.

Britannica describes Mont Blanc as a mountain massif and its highest summit, lying along the French-Italian border and reaching into Switzerland. The massif runs about 40 km southwest from Martigny, Switzerland, and is up to 16 km wide, bordered by the Graian Alps to the south, the Chamonix valley and Savoy Alps to the west, the Pennine Alps to the northeast and the Courmayeur valley to the east. Its principal peaks include Mont Blanc du Tacul, Mont Maudit, the Aiguille du Géant, the Grandes Jorasses, Mont Dolent and the Aiguille du Midi.

Glaciers cover about 100 km², flowing from the central ice dome to below 1,490 m. The summit height is not fixed. The Haute-Savoie Departmental Chamber of Surveyors, which has measured it regularly, recorded about 4,810 m repeatedly between 2000 and 2010, 4,807.81 m in 2021, 4,805.59 m in 2023 and 4,807.47 m on 17 September 2026; the changes come from the snow and ice cap on top, not from movement of the mountain.

Low on the mountain grow forests and green meadows.

Higher up there is only rock, snow and ice. Wild goats called ibex climb the steep rocks. Marmots sleep in burrows all winter.

As you climb toward Mont Blanc, you pass through the same zones of life found across the Alps. Britannica describes forests of spruce, larch and pine on the slopes, giving way above the tree line to summer meadows where farmers graze cows and sheep. Higher still, there is only rock, snow and the glaciers of the massif.

Alpine animals are made for this steep world. The ibex, a wild goat, and the goatlike chamois leap nimbly across craggy slopes. Marmots hibernate in tunnels under the ground, and the ptarmigan, a bird, and the mountain hare turn white for winter. Some animals that had disappeared from the Alps, such as the bearded vulture, have been brought back.

Britannica's account of Alpine vegetation applies around the massif: deciduous trees on valley floors give way to conifers, with spruce reaching about 2,200 m in the Western Alps and larch about 2,500 m; the slow-growing Arolla pine marks the upper forest. Above the tree line and below the permanent snow line lie alpages, summer pastures that gave the range its name, now pressured by invasive weeds, animal waste and erosion from ski development.

Above them, Mont Blanc's ice dome feeds glaciers that, by Britannica's figure, cover about 100 km² of the massif; the Mer de Glace, which Britannica calls the second-longest glacier in the Alps, reached down to 1,250 m in 1930. The fauna is that of the high Alps: ibex and chamois adapted to crags, hibernating marmots, mountain hares and ptarmigan that turn white in winter. Lynx, brown bear and bearded vulture have been successfully reintroduced to parts of the Alps, and national parks protect native species.

Long ago, two men from Chamonix climbed to the very top.

Now many climbers try it. A long tunnel goes under the mountain. Cars and trucks drive through it from France to Italy.

In the 1700s, scientists such as Horace-Bénédict de Saussure noticed that Mont Blanc was the highest mountain in western Europe, and adventurers wanted to climb it. In 1786 Michel-Gabriel Paccard, a doctor from Chamonix, and Jacques Balmat reached the summit. De Saussure climbed it the next year.

Visitors kept coming. Chamonix grew into a big center for mountain sports, with cable cars and winter sports. And deep underneath the massif runs the Mont Blanc Tunnel, 11.7 kilometers long. Italian and French crews dug from opposite sides and met in August 1962, and the tunnel opened in 1965, giving cars and trucks a year-round road between France and Italy.

Britannica credits P. Martel (1742), Jean A. Deluc (1770) and Horace-Bénédict de Saussure with drawing attention to Mont Blanc as western Europe's highest mountain. The first ascent, in 1786, was made by Michel-Gabriel Paccard, a Chamonix doctor, with Jacques Balmat; Britannica calls it one of the most important achievements in mountaineering history, though de Saussure's ascent the following year overshadowed it and a biased account by Marc-Théodore Bourrit later gave Balmat all the credit.

Chamonix remained an exclusive resort until an improved road opened about 1870, then grew into what Britannica calls the largest Alpine tourist center, with aerial tramways and winter sports replacing the old pastoral economy. The Mont Blanc Tunnel, 11.7 km long, was driven from both ends, by Italian crews from 1958 and French crews from 1959, who met in August 1962; it was the first large rock tunnel excavated full-face, and when it opened in 1965 it was the world's longest vehicular tunnel.