Mont Blanc

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Mont Blanc
Mont Blanc and Dome du Gouter in 2004
Elevation:	4,810 metres (15,780 feet)
Location:	France-Italy
Range:	Pennine Alps
Prominence:	4697m
Coordinates:	45°55′ N 6°55′ E
First ascent:	August 8, 1786 by Jacques Balmat and Michel Paccard
Easiest route:	basic snow/ice climb

This article is about the mountain. For other uses, see Mont Blanc (disambiguation)

Mont Blanc (Fr., "White Mountain") or Monte Bianco (It., same meaning, also known as La Dame Blanche (the White Lady)), in the Alps, is the highest mountain in western Europe. Its height is about 4,810 metres (15,780 feet), but varies from year to year by a few metres, depending on snowfall and climate conditions.

Parts of Mont Blanc clearly lie in France and others in Italy, but the French fight for the possession of the mountain top; in some french maps, it is fully within France. In a convention between France and Kingdom of Sardinia, in Turin (1861), the border [1] was fixed on the highest point of the Mont Blanc (monte sur le groupe du Mont Blanc, en touche le point le plus élevé) and this was the last definition of this border, but often the French maps do not agree about this solution.

The two most famous towns near Mont Blanc are Chamonix, Haute-Savoie (France; site of the first Winter Olympic Games in 1924) and Courmayeur, Valle d'Aosta (Italy).

Begun in 1957 and completed in 1965, the 11.6 kilometer (7.25 mile) Mont Blanc Tunnel runs beneath the mountain between these two cities and is one of the major trans-Alpine transport routes.

The Mont Blanc massif is very popular for mountaineering, hiking, and skiing. Mont Blanc was first climbed on August 8, 1786 by Jacques Balmat and Michel Paccard; the first woman to reach the summit was Marie Paradis in 1808.

Mont Blanc

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The Mont Blanc Glaciers

Mont Blanc has traditionally been considered to be 4807 m high, but GPS-based measurements made in 2001 and 2003 show differences of a few metres from year to year. These seem to result from fluctuations, caused by the weather, in the thickness of the glacier that covers the peak to a depth of up to 23 m.

The mountain has a number of glaciers among which the Glacier des Bossons[2] and the glacier D'Argentière can be seen streaming slowly down its flanks; the Mer de Glace is the largest of these.

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