Mer de Glace

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Mer de Glace
Mer de Glace from the Montenvers station

Mer de Glace from the Montenvers station

location Haute-Savoie , France
Mountains Mont Blanc group , Savoy Alps
Type Valley glacier
length 12 km
surface 32 km²
Exposure North
Altitude range 4000  m  -  1500  m
Ice thickness Max. 420 m
Coordinates 45 ° 54 '  N , 6 ° 57'  E Coordinates: 45 ° 54 '  N , 6 ° 57'  E
Mer de Glace (Alps)
Mer de Glace
drainage ArveyronArveRhoneMediterranean
particularities largest glacier in France
Template: Infobox Glacier / Maintenance / Image description missing

The Mer de Glace , in English Arctic Ocean , is the largest glacier in France and the Mont Blanc group and the fourth largest glacier in the Alps . The Mer de Glace (or the system of the individual glaciers belonging to it) is approx. 12 km long and varies in width between 700 and 1950 m. The ice has a maximum thickness of 420 m. The flow rate of this glacier is an average of 90 m per year, which is a lot for a glacier in the Alps. Characteristic of the Mer de Glace are its ogives , which alternate between light and dark bands like "annual rings" across the direction of flow across the glacier.

Mer de Glace in the strict sense of the word only describes the flat glacier tongue that can be viewed from the Montenvers cog railway station . Seen from here, the glacier used to appear, when it reached almost the height of today's train station, like a shallow but troubled sea of ​​ice. The name comes from the two British travelers Richard Pococke and William Windham , who visited Montenvers in 1741.

The Mer de Glace is fed by the two main tributaries Glacier de Leschaux and Glacier du Tacul , which in turn are fed by the Glacier du Géant and the glaciers of the Vallée Blanche . All together form the Mer de Glace in the broader sense.

Glacier des Bois (1907)

The glacier used to flow at its end over a steep step down into the Chamonix valley , right up to the scattered settlement of Les Bois. This glacier tongue was called Glacier des Bois and was one of the showpieces of old Chamonix. At the height of Montenvers the glacier was about 130 m thicker than it is today. The crossing to its right bank was unproblematic. Sheep flocks were even driven across.

Balloon picture from 1909
The Mer de Glace at the beginning of the 20th century.

The river Arveyron rises from the Mer de Glace , a tributary of the Arve , which runs through the Chamonix valley. When the glacier tongue was still in the Chamonix valley floor, the Arveyron sprang from an impressive glacier gate that was easily accessible to tourists. This was a popular motif for painters and later photographers, cf. for example Joseph Mallord William Turner , The source of the Arvéron in the Chamonix valley , 1816 . The waters of the Arve flow over the Rhône into the Mediterranean.

In 1779 Goethe entered the Mer de Glace near Montenvers and noted: "What a dedication to this spectacle made of ice!"

Carl Gustav Carus sketched the valley of the Mer de Glace in 1821 and exhibited the resulting painting The Ice Sea of ​​Chamonix in Dresden in 1824 . Caspar David Friedrich alienated the motif in his picture Das Hochgebirge (also 1824) by depicting the valley through which the Mer de Glace flows with a view of the Grandes Jorasses without the glacier, i.e. an empty, gaping valley without ice.

The Mer de Glace is used by mountaineers as access to the huts of Charpoua , Talefre , Leschaux , Requin and Envers , so it opens up almost the entire Mont Blanc group. In winter and spring, a popular, marked but unprepared ski run, the so-called Vallée Blanche run, leads from the Aiguille du Midi (cable car from Chamonix) over the Mer de Glace down to Chamonix.

The Mer de Glace has been retreating for 150 years, the glacier is now over two kilometers shorter than it was then. From Montenvers a cable car leads down to the glacier. Due to the retreat of the ice, their valley station is no longer located directly on the glacier. A path leads over hundreds of steps down to the glacier (as of 2017: 440 steps). Since the glacier in the Montenvers area loses between four and six meters in height every year, the staircase structure has to be constantly adapted.

Web links

Commons : Mer de Glace  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b c S. U. Nussbaumer / HJ Zumbühl / D. Steiner: Glacier fluctuations of the “Mer de Glace” (Mont Blanc area, France) AD 1500–2050: an interdisciplinary approach based on new historical data and neural networks. (PDF; 217 kB) In: Zeitschrift für Gletscherkunde und Glazialgeologie, Volume 40 (2005/2006). Michael Kuhn, p. 7 , accessed January 1, 2013 .