Skip to content
Pocket Switzerland

Dent Blanche

Fly here

Summit · canton of Valais · 4357 m

Isolated, sharp-edged summit above the Val d'Hérens, one of the most feared teeth of the Valais Alps.

From the basket

Above Évolène, at the very head of its valley, rises an almost perfect pyramid. It is the symbol of the valley, as the Matterhorn is of Valais. From the balloon its outline is strikingly regular: four powerful ridges hold it up, and they point almost exactly to the four cardinal points.

Fly round it to count them. A first ridge faces north-north-west. To the west, the Ferpècle ridge. To the south, the Wandflue. And to the east-north-east, the one nicknamed Four Donkeys’ ridge, all steep rock, the most feared of the four. The pyramid is made of gneiss.

Eastwards stretches the “imperial crown”, five giants above four thousand metres arranged around Zinal: the Dent Blanche stands there beside the Weisshorn, the Bishorn, the Zinalrothorn and the Ober Gabelhorn. To the south the view runs to the Matterhorn and to the Dent d’Hérens beside it, both set on the border.

A few centuries ago, when the glaciers of the Alps were at their greatest, the mountain carried far more snow than today. Its name then made complete sense. Now, in summer, the rock dominates, and the white takes refuge on the north faces. Let yourself be carried above its four ridges, then come back down to the chalets of Évolène.

Sources: Wikipedia, “Dent Blanche” (in French).

All around