Monte Rosa


Monte Rosa is a mountain massif in the eastern part of the Pennine Alps, on the border between Italy and Switzerland. The highest peak of the massif, amongst several peaks of over, is the Dufourspitze, the second highest mountain in the Alps and western Europe, after Mont Blanc. The east face of the Monte Rosa towards Italy has a height of about and is the highest mountain wall of the Alps.
The group is on the watershed between the Rhône and Po basins and has a topographic prominence of, which is ranked fifth in the Alps.
The Monte Rosa massif has four faces. Three are in Italy: the Liskamm heading above the Val de Gressoney; the Valsesian face above Alagna Valsesia at the upper part of the Valle della Sesia; and the steep, big east wall above Macugnaga in the Valle Anzasca. The Swiss north-western face has several glaciers flowing towards the Mattertal with Zermatt.
Its main summit, named Dufourspitze in honor of the surveyor Guillaume-Henri Dufour and wholly located in Switzerland, culminates at and is followed by the five nearly equally high subsidiary summits of Dunantspitze, Grenzgipfel, Nordend, Zumsteinspitze, and Signalkuppe. Some other peaks over, such as Piramide Vincent, Punta Giordani, and Corno Nero, are wholly in Italy. Monte Rosa is the highest mountain in both Switzerland and the Pennine Alps and is also the second-highest mountain in the Alps and in Europe outside of the Caucasus.
The north-west side of the central Monte Rosa massif, with its enormous ice slopes and seracs, constitutes the boundary and upper basin of the large Gorner Glacier, which descends towards Zermatt and merges with its nowadays much larger tributary, the Grenzgletscher, right below the Monte Rosa Hut on the lower end of the visible western wing. The Grenzgletscher is an impressive glacier formation between the western wing of the mountain and Liskamm, a ridge on its southwestern side on the Swiss-Italian border. On the eastern side, in Italy, the mountain falls away in an almost vertical wall of granite and ice, the biggest in Europe, overlooking Macugnaga and several smaller glaciers.
File:Aerial image of the Monte Rosa east face.jpg|thumb|The eastern wall of the Monte Rosa is on Italian territory. The Macugnaga wall has a height of ca. 2400 m above the Valley of Anzasca below and is the highest mountain wall of the Alps.
Monte Rosa was studied by pioneering geologists and explorers, including Leonardo da Vinci in the late fifteenth century and Horace-Bénédict de Saussure in the late eighteenth century. Following a long series of attempts beginning in the early nineteenth century, Monte Rosa's summit, then still called Höchste Spitze, was first reached in 1855 from Zermatt by a party of eight climbers led by three guides. The great east wall was first climbed in 1872, from Macugnaga by Richard Pendlebury with his brother, W. M. Pendlebury, Rev. C Taylor and the guide Ferdinand Imseng.
Each summer, many climbers set out from the Monte Rosa Hut on the mountain's west wing for one of its summits via the normal route or for the Margherita Hut on the Signalkuppe, used as a research station. Many tourists and hikers also come to the Gornergrat on the northwest side of the massif to see a panorama that extends over some of the highest peaks in the Alps.

Etymology

Although Italian rosa and French rose both mean 'pink' or 'rose', the name is unrelated to these words and is instead derived from the Franco-Provençal Valdôtain patois word rouése 'glacier'. On old maps as late as 1740, the mountain was named Monte Bosa and even Monte Biosa by the inhabitants of Val Sesia. The name Mon Boso, which appears in Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks, very likely designates the same mountain. From Zermatt the mountain was formerly known under the name Gornerhorn in Walliser German, later shortened to de Gorner. In standard German, the name Gorner is still used for the western ridge protruding from the main mass and the glacier that lies at its foot but not used for the mountain itself anymore. Nowadays, in German, the Italian name Monte Rosa is used instead.

Geography and climate

Geographic setting and description

Monte Rosa covers areas on both sides of the border between the Swiss canton of Valais and the Italian regions of Piedmont and Aosta Valley. The main summit of Monte Rosa is the Dufourspitze. On the Swiss side the town centre of Zermatt is about north-west and below it. On the Italian side of the massif are located north-east Macugnaga in the Valle Anzasca, south-east-south Alagna Valsesia in the Valsesia and Gressoney-La-Trinité in the Val de Gressoney, respectively, away from the summit. The different sides of the mountain greatly differ from each other. The Swiss west side is almost completely covered by large glaciers, tributaries of the large Gorner Glacier, descending progressively with gentle slopes and forming a large uninhabited glacial valley. The Italian east side consists of a wall overlooking Macugnaga, whose snows feed the Belvedere Glacier at its base. The southeast face, culminating at the Signalkuppe, overlooks the piedmontese Valsesia and the Val de Gressoney in the autonomous region of Aosta Valley.
The mountain is mainly covered by eternal snows and glaciers, except for its summit which is a rocky ridge orientated west–east, near to and perpendicular to the main watershed between Switzerland and Italy. The connecting point between them is the Grenzgipfel right on the border, and therefore also the highest peak on the Italian side. Thus, Monte Rosa is the highest mountain in the Alps whose summit is not on the main alpine watershed, although it is off by only. The Silbersattel and Grenzsattel are the passes located north and south to the summit. The three main secondary summits of Monte Rosa are : the Nordend, the Zumsteinspitze and the Signalkuppe, all of them being positioned right on the Swiss-Italian border. Other secondary summits are the Parrotspitze, the Ludwigshöhe and the Vincentpiramid. All of them originally have German names, since even the Italian valleys used to be inhabited by German-based Walsers inhabited valleys.
Several perpendicular secondary ridges are connected to the central massif, dividing the glaciers that descend towards the Matter Valley. The ridge called Weissgrat connecting the Nordend with the Schwarzberghorn presents a wall of formidable precipices towards the east, but falls away in a gentle slope to the west. For a breadth of a few kilometres the upper snow-fields of the Weissgrat lie almost unbroken upon this slope, but as they begin to descend towards the Matter Valley they are divided into two ice streams by a ridge which gradually emerges from the névé, and finally presents a rather bold front to the glaciers on either side. The highest points of this ridge, appearing insignificant by contrast with the grand objects around, are the Stockhorn and the lower Gornergrat at. On their south sides is the lower Gorner Glacier, formed by the confluence of all the major and minor tributaries descending from the north, west and south sides of the central Monte Rosa massif, while on the north side, the Findel Glacier descends near the hamlet of Findeln.
Monte Rosa is one of the high mountains surrounding the Matter Valley south of Stalden. On the southwest to west are Liskamm, Zwillinge with Castor and Pollux, the Breithorn and the Matterhorn; on the north are the Weisshorn and the Dom. The Gornergrat summit, lying on the north-west at, is a popular viewpoint of the massif, since it is accessible by train from Zermatt, using the highest open-air railway line in Europe.

Geography

The extended range of Monte Rosa, which appears to originate in the intersection of two axes of great elevation, throws out a number of ridges that radiate afar and gradually subside into the plain of northern Italy, covering a relatively large area. There is no convenient mode of subdividing the range. However, the natural limits of the district can be defined on the north side by the two branches of the Visp torrent. Following the west branch through the Mattertal, crossing the Theodul Pass, descending by the Valtournanche to Châtillon and to Ivrea, and passing around the base of the mountains by Arona, along Lake Maggiore, and up the valley of the Toce, to Vogogna, then ascending by the Val Anzasca to the Monte Moro Pass, the circuit is completed by the descent through the Saastal to Stalden. Within the line so traced, exceeding in length, all the ranges properly belonging to this group are included.
The direction of the ranges and the depressions offers a marked contrast to that prevailing throughout the adjoining regions of the Alps. Unless in a small part of the Italian valleys, the direction here is either parallel or perpendicular to the meridian. Monte Rosa itself lies near the intersection of a great north and south ridge, extending from the Balfrin through the Mischabelhörner, and the highest peaks of the mountain itself, to the Vincent Pyramide, and thence through the range that bounds the Valle di Gressoney, nearly to Ivrea, with the transverse range lying between the Dent d'Herens and the Pizzo Bianco near Macugnaga. The minor ridges on the north side of the border are parallel to this latter range, with their corresponding depressions occupied by the glaciers of Gorner and Findelen.
On clear days, the mountainous massif of Monte Rosa provides a striking view from the Po plain, particularly its upper reaches in western Lombardy and eastern Piedmont. It dominates the horizon, towering between other lesser Alpine peaks as a prominent, multi-pointed, razor-sharp bulge, its permanent glaciers shining under the sun.
The massif is the border between Switzerland and Italy, though glacial melt has caused some alterations to the border. These changes were ratified by the two countries in 2009 and will continue to be subject to change as melting continues.