59 Fun Facts About Mont Blanc

Roughly how high is Mont Blanc?

About 4,800 metres. The top is a dome of ice and snow, not rock, so the official height shifts as it thickens and thins: the 2023 survey found 4,805.59 metres, 2.2 metres lower than in 2021.

Mont Blanc is the highest mountain in Europe outside which range?

The Caucasus. Its highest peak, Elbrus, reaches 5,642 metres, so climbers chasing the Seven Summits disagree about Europe's entry: some lists name Elbrus, others Mont Blanc.

Besides France and Italy, which country contains part of the Mont Blanc massif?

Switzerland. The three borders meet just below the top of Mont Dolent, which is why the classic Tour du Mont Blanc walk passes through three countries in about ten days.

Which Gothic novel sets a pivotal meeting on the Mer de Glace, the great glacier above Chamonix?

Frankenstein. Victor climbs to Montanvert and walks out onto the 'sea of ice', where the Creature bounds over the crevasses to reach him, tells its life story and demands a companion.

Mont Blanc's summit sits on the watershed between which two great rivers?

The Rhône and the Po. Snowmelt from the French side runs down the Arve to the Rhône and the Mediterranean, while the Italian side drains through the Dora Baltea to the Po and the Adriatic.

Mont Blanc and its neighbours are formed mainly from what rock?

Granite. Quartz crystals line its clefts, and the Chamonix men who climbed after them, the cristalliers, went on to become the valley's first mountain guides.

The classic Haute Route trek and ski tour runs from Chamonix to which Swiss resort?

Zermatt. Victorian climbers of Britain's Alpine Club worked it out and called it the High Level Route; the French translation is the name that stuck for the 180 km crossing of passes and glaciers.

Which scientist carried flasks of broth up to the Mer de Glace in 1860 to test mountain air for germs?

Louis Pasteur. A mule carried his sealed flasks up to Montanvert; of twenty he opened on the glacier only one spoiled, evidence that germs ride on dust in the air and do not arise by themselves.

Who made the first recorded ascent of Mont Blanc on 8 August 1786?

Jacques Balmat and Michel-Gabriel Paccard. They went up with no rope, ice axes or crampons, yet a jealous rival's slanted account soon handed Balmat nearly all the credit.

Which Swiss scientist offered a reward in 1760 for Mont Blanc's first ascent, then climbed it himself in 1787?

Horace-Bénédict de Saussure. He went up with his valet and a large team of guides, had a tent pitched on the summit and set to work with his instruments to calculate the mountain's height.

Chamonix was not yet French when Mont Blanc was first climbed in 1786, so which state ruled it?

The Kingdom of Sardinia. The House of Savoy ruled the valley from Turin, so the first men on the summit were Sardinian subjects; Chamonix became French for good only when Savoy was annexed in 1860.

What was Michel-Gabriel Paccard's profession?

Medical doctor. A keen botanist as well, he treated the climb as science and carried a barometer and a thermometer to the summit to take readings.

Who was the first woman to reach the summit of Mont Blanc, in 1808?

Marie Paradis. An inn servant from the Chamonix valley, she turned the climb into a living: as 'Maria de Mont Blanc' she laid on food and drink for later climbers and visitors.

Henriette d'Angeville is often credited as the first woman to do what on Mont Blanc?

Reach the summit without being carried. The first woman up, in 1808, told of being dragged and carried near the top; in 1838 d'Angeville climbed it in an outfit she designed herself, then kept climbing for 25 years.

France and Italy have long disagreed about what on Mont Blanc?

Who owns the summit. Italian maps run the border along the watershed, straight over the top, while French maps bend it south so the whole summit dome is French, and neither government has given way.

Which French ruler gained Savoy, and with it Chamonix, under the 1860 Treaty of Turin?

Napoleon III. Savoy and Nice were his price for backing Italian unification: his army fought Austria in 1859, and a year later the new frontier ran across the Mont Blanc massif.

Which famous engineer agreed to build a summit observatory for Pierre Janssen if rock could be found under the ice?

Gustave Eiffel. He insisted on rock foundations no more than 12 metres down, but two tunnels driven under the summit in 1891 met only ice, so he withdrew and the hut went up on the snow instead.

What finally put an end to Janssen's observatory on the summit of Mont Blanc?

Shifting ice wrecked its frame. With no rock to stand on, the hut was set straight onto the summit snow in 1893; it needed re-levelling by 1906 and was abandoned in 1909, two years after Janssen died.

Unable to climb on foot, how did astronomer Pierre Janssen reach Mont Blanc's summit in 1890?

On a sledge hauled by guides. Lame since a childhood accident, the 66-year-old had himself dragged up the snow ridges so that he could study the Sun's spectrum through thinner air.

A second officially named Mont Blanc rises from a range called the Alps on which world?

The Moon. Early mappers named lunar ranges after Earth's, so its Montes Alpes got a Mont Blanc too, a peak rising more than 3.5 km above the lava plain of the Mare Imbrium.

Which American writer joked that he had climbed Mont Blanc by telescope from a Chamonix hotel yard?

Mark Twain. In A Tramp Abroad he pays three francs for 'the entire ascent', is assured the telescope man has 'never lost a man', then pesters Chamonix's chief guide for a summit diploma he never gets.

What is the most popular way up Mont Blanc, also called the Voie Royale?

The Goûter Route. It is reckoned the easiest line to the top, which is why most parties choose it, though it still means two days on the mountain and a night in a hut near 3,800 metres.

What makes the Grand Couloir on the standard way up from Saint-Gervais so notorious?

Frequent rockfalls. Climbers have to cross a 100-metre gully raked by falling stones, and warming is making it worse: across the massif the permafrost that cements cracked rock together is thawing.

What caused the 1892 disaster that killed at least 175 people at Saint-Gervais, below Mont Blanc?

A burst glacial lake. A water pocket hidden inside the Tête Rousse glacier gave way at night, and the torrent of mud and boulders swept through the spa at Saint-Gervais; when a new pocket was found in 2010, engineers pumped it out.

What must climbers on Mont Blanc's busiest route hold since 2019?

Hut reservation. Roughly 20,000 people try the climb each year, and after a run of deadly summers the authorities capped the numbers by tying access to booked beds in the refuges.

Which leader of the 1950 Annapurna expedition later served nine years as mayor of Chamonix?

Maurice Herzog. Frostbite on Annapurna cost him toes and fingers, so he dictated his best-selling account from a hospital bed, then went into politics as sports minister and Chamonix's mayor.

Which is the highest mountain hut on Mont Blanc, at 4,362 m?

Vallot. It is an unheated metal box for climbers in trouble, not a staffed hut, and the first cabin on the spot went up in the 1890s beside scientist Joseph Vallot's high-altitude observatory.

Which future pope helped discover the normal Italian route on Mont Blanc in 1890?

Pius XI. Then Father Achille Ratti, a keen climber based in Milan, he found the line while coming down from the summit in July 1890, and Italians still know it as the Ratti-Grasselli route.

Pilot Henri Giraud achieved what on Mont Blanc in 1960?

He landed a plane on the summit. Giraud set his little Piper down on the snow dome on 23 June 1960; such landings were illegal then, and his persistence pushed France into regulating mountain flying.

Who set the fastest Mont Blanc round trip from Chamonix, 4 hours 57 minutes, in 2013?

Swiss runner Pierre-André Gobet had held the record at 5:10:14 since 1990.

In 2013, what did a climber find in a metal box from an Air India crash on a Mont Blanc glacier?

Precious gems. The box held about a hundred emeralds, sapphires and rubies; he walked it into the local police station, and in 2021, with no owner traced, the stones were split between him and Chamonix's council.

What did a group of 20 people set up on the summit in September 2007?

A hot tub. The friends refused to use a helicopter, so twenty of them carried the parts up overnight on their backs, filled the tub with summit snow, heated it and climbed in.

The Mont Blanc Tunnel carries traffic from Chamonix into which Italian region?

Aosta Valley. Drivers leave France and surface in Italy's smallest region, which won self-rule in the 1940s because of its French language and culture; French is still official there beside Italian.

Which two heads of state inaugurated the Mont Blanc Tunnel on 16 July 1965?

Charles de Gaulle and Giuseppe Saragat. The two presidents opened what was then the world's longest road tunnel, giving France and Italy a year-round link in place of passes that snow closed for most of the year.

Which cargo fuelled the 1999 Mont Blanc Tunnel fire?

Flour and margarine. A Belgian lorry stopped halfway through with smoke pouring from it, the fat-laden load went up, and the two-day blaze killed 39 people; the tunnel stayed shut for three years.

Two Air India flights crashed into Mont Blanc while descending toward which airport?

Geneva. The 1966 captain believed he had already cleared the mountain when he began letting down for the airport; his Boeing 707 struck near the summit, close to where a Constellation had crashed sixteen years earlier.

Which "father" of India's nuclear programme died in the 1966 Air India crash on Mont Blanc?

Homi J. Bhabha. India's atomic energy chief was on his way to Vienna when the Boeing 707 came down, and in 2012 a diplomatic mailbag from the flight surfaced on a glacier, still holding 1966 newspapers.

What was the name of the Lockheed Constellation that crashed into Mont Blanc in 1950?

Malabar Princess. The Constellation flew into the mountain in a storm with 48 people aboard, and in 2004 a French feature film inspired by the crash took the aircraft's name as its title.

Chamonix hosted which landmark sporting event in 1924?

It was originally staged as an "International Winter Sports Week" and only later recognised as the Winter Games.

A prize for alpinism presented at Chamonix in 1924 honoured the members of which expedition?

The 1922 British Everest expedition. Its climbers had gone higher than anyone before, above 8,300 metres, without reaching the top; a deputy collected the medals because the leader was away preparing the next attempt.

Founded in 1821, which Chamonix institution is the world's oldest of its kind?

Its guides' company. The Compagnie des Guides was formed the year after an avalanche on Mont Blanc killed three guides, and its rules shared out the work by strict rota: clients took whoever was next in line.

What cut the hauling cable of the Vallée Blanche cable car beside the Aiguille du Midi in August 1961?

A low-flying fighter jet. The French Air Force F-84 sliced through the line; three cabins fell and six people died, the pilot landed his damaged plane, and 81 passengers hung above the glacier for hours.

The Skyway Monte Bianco cable car on the Italian side, opened in 2015, is notable for what?

Its slowly rotating cabins. Each round, 80-person car turns a full circle as it climbs, so every passenger gets the whole sweep of valleys and peaks without leaving the window.

The Mer de Glace is France's longest glacier, but which one is the longest in the whole Alps?

The Aletsch. That giant of the Bernese Alps is about 23 km long; the Mer de Glace has thinned so fast that the lift built down to its ice was left more than 500 steps short and had to be replaced in 2024.

The Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, first run in 2003, covers what distance around the mountain?

Some 170 km. The race follows the hikers' Tour du Mont Blanc, a walk of about ten days, but the winners run it in roughly twenty hours, with some 10,000 metres of climbing on the way.

Pointe Whymper on the Grandes Jorasses honours the Englishman who, weeks after climbing it, led the first ascent of which peak?

The Matterhorn. Edward Whymper climbed the Jorasses point in June 1865 as a lookout for another route; three weeks later he stood on the Matterhorn, and four of his party died on the way down.

Under Fascist rule, the Italian town of Courmayeur was briefly renamed what?

Cormaiore. From 1939 the regime Italianised French place names right across the region, and the old spelling returned only once Fascism had fallen and the Italian republic was being set up.

The Montblanc pen company, founded in 1906, is based in which German city?

Hamburg. A Berlin engineer began making the fountain pens in 1906 and Hamburg backers soon took the venture over; the white star on each cap stands for the snowcap of the mountain it was named after.

The Mont Blanc dessert is made from what, piped into vermicelli strands and topped with whipped cream?

Sweetened chestnut purée. Pressed into a tangle of thin strands and capped with whipped cream, it is meant to look like a snow-covered peak, hence the name; the modern version took shape in Paris.

Which French novelist visited Chamonix in 1832 and wrote up the first woman's ascent of Mont Blanc in a travel book?

Alexandre Dumas. In Impressions de voyage he passes on the tale as his Chamonix guide told it, a long and lively version that nonetheless puts her climb in 1811, three years too late.

Which James Bond film shot its ski chase on the slopes above Chamonix?

The World Is Not Enough. The chase is set far to the east but was filmed above Chamonix, and when an avalanche struck in the Alps during the shoot, filming stopped so the production's helicopters could join the rescue.

What is the name of the glass skywalk that opened atop the Aiguille du Midi in December 2013?

Step into the Void. The glass box hangs off the summit rock with only air beneath its floor; its walls are three bonded layers of glass, built to stand hurricane-force winds.

How long is the famous Vallée Blanche off-piste ski run that starts at the Aiguille du Midi?

20 km. It is no groomed piste: the route is unmarked, unpatrolled and on glacier ice the whole way, threading past seracs and open crevasses, which is why skiers are urged to hire a guide.

The summer-only Vallée Blanche cable car links the Aiguille du Midi to which peak on the Italian side?

Pointe Helbronner. The small cabins swing across five kilometres of glacier, and with the cable cars that climb to each end they let a visitor travel from Chamonix to Courmayeur entirely through the air.

How far out of line did the Mont Blanc Tunnel's two halves meet?

About 13 cm. After three years of boring towards each other through more than 11 km of rock, the French and Italian crews met almost dead-on in August 1962; months earlier, an avalanche had crushed the Italian camp and killed three workers.

What did a guard take into the burning Mont Blanc Tunnel in 1999 to rescue trapped drivers?

A motorcycle. Pierlucio Tinazzi, an Italian patrolman, rode into the smoke to help people trapped inside and died in a shelter beside an unconscious driver he had dragged there; Italy awarded him its gold medal for civil valour.

Which road tunnel, opened in 1980, is the Mont Blanc Tunnel's main rival for traffic between France and Italy?

Fréjus. It runs for nearly 13 km between Modane and Bardonecchia, and its opening ended the car-carrying trains that used to shuttle drivers through the old rail tunnel alongside.

What kind of line carries visitors from Chamonix up to Montenvers, above the Mer de Glace?

A rack railway. A toothed rail between the tracks lets its trains grip gradients of up to 22 per cent; Chamonix residents protested against the plan, because taking visitors up by mule was a local living.

Chamonix has been twinned since 1978 with a city at the foot of which other famous mountain?

Mount Fuji. The partner is Fujiyoshida, whose shrine is the historic starting point for pilgrims climbing Japan's highest peak, so the pact pairs the gateways to two countries' most famous summits.