Solid mass of Mont Blanc

Geography

Situation

This solid mass is relatively restricted in surface since it extends on only 400 km ² approximately, but it encroaches on three countries: it is located mainly on the French department of the Haute-Savoie, but also of the Savoy, on the Val of Italian Aoste and the Swiss Valais.

It is very homogeneous, i.e. few valleys intersect the relief, if it is not the Val Veny upstream of Courmayeur, Italian side, which somewhat isolates the top from Lancebranlette. Indeed, the glaciers occupy the depressions until bottom in the valleys, and the torrents which they feed are not enough to erode the solid mass.

One can divide the solid mass into several zones:

the Domes of Miage and Tré-the-Head;
the central group, which includes/understands the top of the Mont Blanc itself;
the Green Needle, Thick;
needles of Chamonix, since the Needle of the South until the Needle of Large Charmoz;
the Large Jorasses;
the group of the Needle of Argentière.

The principal valleys which surround it are connected by the Tunnel of the Mount Blanc and the Col of the Small-Saint-Bernard (between Italy and France) and the Col of Montets via Vallorcine (between France and Switzerland). In fact, the solid mass of the Mount Blanc is strongly equipped in tourist installations, in order to accommodate the tourists of the whole world: one counts five Téléphérique S for the only valley of Chamonix, most famous being that climbing with the Aiguille of the South (3842 m) and joining Courmayeur.

It is surrounded of the Red Aiguilles in the North-West (Right Bank of the Arve), of the Massif of Haut-Giffre in north, of the the Valaisan Alps in the east, of the the grées Alps in south-east and of the Massif of Beaufortain in south-west.

Principal tops

the Mont Blanc (4810,9 m)
the Mont Blanc de Courmayeur (4748 m)
the Rock of the Spinner (4677 m)
the Large Bump (4547 m)
the Small Bump (4513 m)
the Cursed Mount (4465 m)
the Point Louis Amédée (4460 m)
the Needles Open airs (4354 m)
the Dome of Tasting (4304 m)
the Mont Blanc of Tacul (4248 m)
the Large pillar of Angle (4243 m)
the Large Jorasses (4208 m)
the Green Needle (4122 m)
the White Needle (4108 m)
the Needle of Bionnassay (4052 m)
the Tooth of the Giant (4013 m)
the Point Baretti (4013 m)
the Piton of the Italians (4002 m)
Tré-the-Head (3930 m)
the Needle of Argentière (3900 m)
the Needle of Triplet (3870 m)
the Needle of Tasting (3863 m)
the Aiguille of the South (3842 m)
the Aiguille of the Black Turn (3835 m)
the Aiguille of the Hanging-post (3824 m)
the Mont Pare (3823 m)
the Aiguille of the Glaciers (3817 m)
the Aiguille Chenavier (3799 m)
the Drus (3754 m)

Glaciers

The solid mass of Mont Blanc shelters the most important Glacier S of France. The most known, on the northern slope, are the Mer of Ice, the Glacier of Let us work and that of Tré-the-Head (of face on the photograph) .

Geology

The solid mass of Mont Blanc belongs to the external crystalline solid masses of the Alps. It is primarily granitic, but one also finds there outcrop of Gneiss, according to this distribution: the heart of the solid mass (White Valley) and is (Glacier of the Turn, Glacier of Sorts) are in the granitic Pluto while the Western part (top of the Mont Blanc itself, Dôme of Tasting, the sector of Tré-the-Head) makes up of Schiste S crystalline lenses, mainly of the gneisses and the mylonitoschists. It is in fact old rocks hercyniennes included in the alpine Orogenèse.

Activities

Alpinism

The solid mass is one of the paradises in France and Europe for the practice of the alpinism.

Winter sports resorts

Argentière (France)
Chamonix (France)
Houches (France)
Séez (France)
Courmayeur (Italy)
Collar of Forclaz, commune of Sorts (Swiss)
Champex-Lake, commune of Orsières (Swiss)
Vallorcine (France)

Environment

Encouraged by the creation of several natural reserves in the solid masses neighborhood (for example the Natural reserve of the Red needles) in order to preserve the mountain, a natural park covering the whole of the solid mass has been being studied for several years. But the project encounters legal difficulties because of the geographical location of this frontier solid mass.

See too

Geography of the Western Alps
White Mons

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