ABSTRACT
The snowcap of Mont Blanc is the highest point in Europe west of the Caucasus, the summit of a mountain massif that extends 50 km from Martigny in the northeast to St Gervais in the southwest, separating France and Italy and protruding into the Swiss canton of Valais (Figure 4.1). A part of the Hercynian system, it consists of sedimentary rocks metamorphosed by granitic magmas. The central granites give the near vertical slopes of the Dru, Grandes Jorasses and Aiguille du Géant and are capped at the highest levels by crystalline schists which outcrop in the Grands Mulets and near the summit of Mont Blanc itself.
