| Eigerjoch | |
|---|---|
View from the north side | |
| Elevation | 3,605 m (11,827 ft) |
| Traversed by | Leslie Stephen and party (1859) |
| Location | Bern, Switzerland |
| Range | Bernese Alps |
| Coordinates | 46°34′20″N8°00′24″E / 46.57222°N 8.00667°E |
The Eigerjoch is a high Alpine pass lying between the Mönch (south) and the Eiger (north). The lowest point (3,605 m) on the ridge is named Nördliches Eigerjoch while another pass (3,747 m) located closer to the Mönch is named Südliches Eigerjoch.
A mountain pass is a navigable route through a mountain range or over a ridge. Since many of the world's mountain ranges have presented formidable barriers to travel, passes have played a key role in trade, war, and both human and animal migration throughout Earth's history. At lower elevations it may be called a hill pass. The highest vehicle-accessible pass in the world appears to be Mana Pass, located in the Himalayas on the border between India and Tibet, China.
The Mönch at 4,107 metres (13,474 ft) is a mountain in the Bernese Alps, in Switzerland. Together with the Eiger and the Jungfrau, it forms a highly recognisable group of mountains, visible from far away.
The Eiger is a 3,967-metre (13,015 ft) mountain of the Bernese Alps, overlooking Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen in the Bernese Oberland of Switzerland, just north of the main watershed and border with Valais. It is the easternmost peak of a ridge crest that extends across the Mönch to the Jungfrau at 4,158 m (13,642 ft), constituting one of the most emblematic sights of the Swiss Alps. While the northern side of the mountain rises more than 3,000 m (10,000 ft) above the two valleys of Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen, the southern side faces the large glaciers of the Jungfrau-Aletsch area, the most glaciated region in the Alps. The most notable feature of the Eiger is its 1,800-metre-high (5,900 ft) north face of rock and ice, named Eiger-Nordwand, Eigerwand or just Nordwand, which is the biggest north face in the Alps. This huge face towers over the resort of Kleine Scheidegg at its base, on the homonymous pass connecting the two valleys.
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The Eiger does not lie in the ridge of the Bernese Alps which divides the basins of the Rhone and the Aar, but forms a promontory extending north-east from the Mönch, and is connected with it by a long and high arête, in which jagged teeth of rock project through a coating of ice. At the southern end, where this arete abuts against the shoulder of the Mönch, it overlooks the gently-sloping plateau which forms the summit of the Mönchsjoch, and the descent on the side of the Aletsch Glacier presents no serious difficulty. [1]
The Bernese Alps are a mountain range of the Alps, located in western Switzerland. Although the name suggests that they are located in the Berner Oberland region of the canton of Bern, portions of the Bernese Alps are in the adjacent cantons of Valais, Fribourg and Vaud, the latter being usually named Fribourg Alps and Vaud Alps respectively. The highest mountain in the range, the Finsteraarhorn, is also the highest point in the canton of Bern.
An arête is a narrow ridge of rock which separates two valleys. It is typically formed when two glaciers erode parallel U-shaped valleys. Arêtes can also form when two glacial cirques erode headwards towards one another, although frequently this results in a saddle-shaped pass, called a col. The edge is then sharpened by freeze-thaw weathering, and the slope on either side of the arete steepened through mass wasting events and the erosion of exposed, unstable rock. The word ‘arête’ is actually French for edge or ridge; similar features in the Alps are described with the German equivalent term Grat.
The Aletsch Glacier or Great Aletsch Glacier is the largest glacier in the Alps. It has a length of about 23 km (14 mi) (2014), has about a volume of 15.4 km3 (3.7 cu mi) (2011), and covers about 81.7 km2 (2011) in the eastern Bernese Alps in the Swiss canton of Valais. The Aletsch Glacier is composed of four smaller glaciers converging at Concordia Place, where its thickness was measured by the ETH to be still near 1 km (3,300 ft). It then continues towards the Rhône valley before giving birth to the Massa. The Aletsch Glacier is – like most glaciers on this world – a retreating glacier. As of 2016, since 1980 it lost 1.3 kilometres (0.81 mi) of its length, since 1870 3.2 kilometres (2.0 mi), and lost also more than 300 metres (980 ft) of its thickness.
