Monte Rosa - East Face (Piedmont, Italy)

Monte Rosa is the largest massif in the Alps, the second highest after Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Switzerland and the second highest in Italy. The mountain also beats the record for having nine of the first highest 20 summits in all of the Alps, as an alpine mountain chain with a higher than average altitude. These summits are easy to get to on the lifts that whisk visitors up the 3,000 metres of Monte Moro (affording spectacular views over the “Himalayan Face” of Monte Rosa), and up the 2,000 metres of the Belvedere, literally at the foot of the glacier.

The place name Monte Rosa does not actually derive from the pinky, rose-coloured hues that sweep across the massif at dawn, as one might imagine, but in fact from the Latin word rosia, which in Aosta Valley dialect becomes rouése or rouja, meaning “glacier”.

Monte Rosa is famous for its 4,000-metre altitude, which for centuries has attracted some of the most renowned expert mountaineers. From Dufour to Nordend, Zumstein to Gnifetti, Monte Rosa’s summits are undisputed iconic symbols of mountaineering across the ages.The east face, with its staggering drop from the 4,634-metre high Dufour Peak down to Macugnaga at an altitude of 1,327 metres, is a true spectacle of nature, one of the symbolic features of the Alps and the only one of its kind in the entire alpine region.