Mont Blanc

Mont Blanc Facts Page

Mont Blanc is the highest mountain the Alps and in Western Europe. The two most famous towns near Mont Blanc are Courmayeur, in Aosta Valley, Italy, and Chamonix, in Haute-Savoie France, the site of the first Winter Olympics.

The first recorded ascent of Mont Blanc was on 8 August 1786 by Jacques Balmat and the doctor Michel Paccard. This climb traditionally marks the start of modern mountaineering. The first woman to reach the summit was Marie Paradis in 1808.

In 1891, Pierre Janssen, a scientific academic credited for discovering helium, envisaged the construction of an observatory at the summit of Mont Blanc. Gustave Eiffel, designer of the Eiffel tower, agreed to take on the project, provided he could find strong foundations. A Swiss surveyor dug down 15 m (49 ft) but found nothing solid, so Eiffel gave up. Despite this, the observatory was built in 1893. During the cold wave of January 1893 a temperature of −43 °C (−45.4 °F) was recorded on the Mount Blanc, being the lowest ever recorded there. Levers attached to the ice supported the observatory. This worked to some extent until 1906, when the building started leaning heavily. The movement of the levers corrected the lean slightly, but three years later (two years after Janssen’s death) a crevasse started opening under the observatory and it was abandoned. Eventually the building fell.

Begun in 1957 and completed in 1965, the 11.6 km (7¼ mi) Mont Blanc Tunnel runs beneath the mountain between these two countries and is one of the major trans-Alpine transport routes.

Since the French Revolution, the ownership of the summit has spurred many debates. Previously, the entire mountain had formed part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. In May 1796, the Sardinian king ceded the territories containing Mont Blanc to the French Republic. This act is even more confusing, because it states that the border should be visible from the town of Chamonix and Courmayeur. The summit is not visible from Courmayeur, because part of the mountain lower down obscures it. The convention of 7 March 1861 recognizes the border on the icecap of the Mont Blanc, and therefore makes it both French and Italian. Watershed analysis of modern topographic mapping not only places the main summit on the border, but also suggests that the border should follow a line northwards from the main summit towards Mont Maudit, leaving the south east ridge to Mont Blanc wholly within Italy. Despite the fact that the Franco-Italian border was redefined in both 1947 and 1963, the commission, made up of both Italians and French, ignored the Mont Blanc issue.

The summit of Mont Blanc is a thick, perennial ice and snow dome whose thickness varies, so no exact and permanent summit elevation can be determined. But accurate measurements have been made. For a long time its official elevation was 4,807 m (15,770 ft). Then in 2002, surveyors used GPS technology to measure the summit at 4,810.40 m (15,782 ft 2 in).

After the 2003 heatwave in Europe, a team of scientists re-measured the height at 4,808.45 m (15,775 ft 9 in), and the peak was 75 centimeters (30 in) away from where it had been in 2002.

After these results were published, more than 500 points were measured, to assess the effects of climate change, and the fluctuations in the height of the mountain at different points. From then on the elevation of the mountain has been measured every two years.

The interpretation that the heatwave had caused this fluctuation is disputed, because the heatwave is known not to have significantly affected the glaciers above 4,000 m (13,000 ft). The height and position of the summit could have been moved by general glacial forces. At this elevation, the temperatures rarely rise above 0 °C (32 °F).

The summit was measured again in 2005, and the results were published on 16 December 2005. The height was found to be 4,808.75 m (15,776 ft 9 in), 30 cm (12 in) more than the previous recorded height.

Mont Blanc Links

French Embassy

CDC Health Infromation

Weather for Chamonix, France

Travel Insurance