The Mer de Glace (French pronunciation: [mɛʁ də ɡlas], lit. 'Sea of Ice') is a valley glacier located on the northern slopes of the Mont Blanc massif, in the French Alps. It is 7.5 km long and 200 metres (660 ft) deep but, when all its tributary glaciers are taken into account, it can be regarded as the longest and largest glacier in France, and the second longest in the Alps after the Aletsch Glacier.
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👉 Mer de Glace in the context of Mont Blanc massif
The Mont Blanc massif (French: Massif du Mont-Blanc [masif dy mɔ̃ blɑ̃]; Italian: Massiccio del Monte Bianco) is a mountain range in the Alps, located mostly in France and Italy, but also straddling Switzerland at its northeastern end. It contains eleven major independent summits, each over 4,000 metres (13,123 ft) in height. It is named after Mont Blanc (4,808 metres (15,774 ft)), the highest point in western Europe and the European Union. Because of its considerable overall altitude, a large proportion of the massif is covered by glaciers, which include the Mer de Glace and the Miage Glacier – the longest glaciers in France and Italy, respectively.
The massif forms a watershed between the vast catchments of the rivers Rhône and Po, and a tripoint between France, Italy and Switzerland; it also marks the border between two climate regions by separating the northern and western Alps from the southern Alps. The mountains of the massif consist mostly of granite and gneiss rocks and at high altitudes the vegetation is an arctic-alpine flora.
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Mer de Glace in the context of Arve
The Arve (French pronunciation: [aʁv]) is a river in France (département of Haute-Savoie), and Switzerland (canton of Geneva). A left tributary of the Rhône, it is 108 km (67 mi) long, of which 9 km in Switzerland. Its catchment area is 1,976 km (763 sq mi), of which 80 km in Switzerland. Its average discharge in Geneva is 79 m/s (2,800 cu ft/s).
Rising in the northern side of the Mont Blanc massif in the Alps, close to the Swiss border, it receives water from the many glaciers of the Chamonix valley (mainly the Mer de Glace) before flowing north-west into the Rhône on the west side of Geneva, where its much higher level of silt brings forth a striking contrast between the two rivers.