Mont Blanc Trivia
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59 free Mont Blanc trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Mont Blanc is the roof of Western Europe, and this trivia quiz climbs all over it. It covers the geography and geology (why the height changes every two years, which countries share the massif, where the border dispute lies), the mountaineering history (Saussure's reward, Balmat and Paccard's 1786 first ascent, Marie Paradis and Henriette d'Angeville, the Goûter Route and its deadly couloir) and the surprising things that have happened on the summit, from a doomed observatory to a hot tub and fifty paragliders. The quiz also takes in Chamonix and the first Winter Olympics, Courmayeur, the Aiguille du Midi cable car, the Skyway Monte Bianco, the Mer de Glace, the Mont Blanc Tunnel and its 1999 fire, the two Air India crashes, the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc and the speed records of Kilian Jornet and others. For good measure there are a couple of questions on the pen brand and the chestnut dessert that borrowed the mountain's name. Every answer was verified against Wikipedia's articles on Mont Blanc and its massif, tunnel, towns and climbers, and each question links to its source. Try our Alps and Mountains of the World quizzes next.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Roughly how high is Mont Blanc?
About 4,800 metres
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.
Q 02Mont Blanc is the highest mountain in Europe outside which range?
The Caucasus
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.
Q 03Besides France and Italy, which country contains part of the Mont Blanc massif?
Switzerland
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.
Q 04Which Gothic novel sets a pivotal meeting on the Mer de Glace, the great glacier above Chamonix?
Frankenstein
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.
Q 05Mont Blanc's summit sits on the watershed between which two great rivers?
The Rhône and the Po
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.
Q 06Mont Blanc and its neighbours are formed mainly from what rock?
Granite
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.
Q 07The classic Haute Route trek and ski tour runs from Chamonix to which Swiss resort?
Zermatt
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.
Q 08Which scientist carried flasks of broth up to the Mer de Glace in 1860 to test mountain air for germs?
Louis Pasteur
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.
Q 09Who made the first recorded ascent of Mont Blanc on 8 August 1786?
Jacques Balmat and Michel-Gabriel Paccard
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.
Q 10Which Swiss scientist offered a reward in 1760 for Mont Blanc's first ascent, then climbed it himself in 1787?
Horace-Bénédict de Saussure
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.
Q 11Chamonix was not yet French when Mont Blanc was first climbed in 1786, so which state ruled it?
The Kingdom of Sardinia
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.
Q 12What was Michel-Gabriel Paccard's profession?
Medical doctor
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.
Q 13Who was the first woman to reach the summit of Mont Blanc, in 1808?
Marie Paradis
Q 21Which American writer joked that he had climbed Mont Blanc by telescope from a Chamonix hotel yard?
Mark Twain
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.
Q 22What is the most popular way up Mont Blanc, also called the Voie Royale?
The Goûter Route
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.
Q 23What makes the Grand Couloir on the standard way up from Saint-Gervais so notorious?
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.
Q 14Henriette d'Angeville is often credited as the first woman to do what on Mont Blanc?
Reach the summit without being carried
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.
Q 15France and Italy have long disagreed about what on Mont Blanc?
Who owns the summit
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.
Q 16Which French ruler gained Savoy, and with it Chamonix, under the 1860 Treaty of Turin?
Napoleon III
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.
Q 17Which famous engineer agreed to build a summit observatory for Pierre Janssen if rock could be found under the ice?
Gustave Eiffel
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.
Q 18What finally put an end to Janssen's observatory on the summit of Mont Blanc?
Shifting ice wrecked its frame
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.
Q 19Unable to climb on foot, how did astronomer Pierre Janssen reach Mont Blanc's summit in 1890?
On a sledge hauled by guides
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.
Q 20A second officially named Mont Blanc rises from a range called the Alps on which world?
The Moon
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.
Frequent rockfalls
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.
Q 24What caused the 1892 disaster that killed at least 175 people at Saint-Gervais, below Mont Blanc?
A burst glacial lake
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.
Q 25What must climbers on Mont Blanc's busiest route hold since 2019?
Hut reservation
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.
Q 26Which leader of the 1950 Annapurna expedition later served nine years as mayor of Chamonix?
Maurice Herzog
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.
Q 27Which is the highest mountain hut on Mont Blanc, at 4,362 m?
Vallot
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.
Q 28Which future pope helped discover the normal Italian route on Mont Blanc in 1890?
Pius XI
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.
Q 29Pilot Henri Giraud achieved what on Mont Blanc in 1960?
He landed a plane on the summit
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.
Q 30Who set the fastest Mont Blanc round trip from Chamonix, 4 hours 57 minutes, in 2013?
Kilian Jornet
Swiss runner Pierre-André Gobet had held the record at 5:10:14 since 1990.