Mer de Glace

The Mer de Glace (, ) 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 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. The Mer de Glace can be considered as originating at an elevation of , just north of the , where it is formed by the confluence of the and the . The former is fed by the , whilst the latter is, in turn, fed by the Glacier des Périardes, the vast Glacier du Géant and the broad icefields of the . The Glacier du Tacul supplies much more ice than the Glacier de Leschaux.

From the Aiguille du Tacul, the Mer de Glace flows north-north-west between on the east and Trélaporte on the west. It descends below Montenvers, at which point it is approximately 0.5 km wide, and descends to approximately . The glacier was once easily visible from Chamonix but has been shrinking backwards, and is now barely visible from below.

thumb|[[John Tyndall explored the glacial tributaries feeding Mer de Glace in 1857]]

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the glacier descended all the way down to the hamlet of Les Bois, where it was known as Glacier des Bois. At that time the river Arveyron emerged from the glacier under a grotto-like vault () and, through the accounts of early writers and explorers, attracted many more visitors, painters and later photographers, for example J. M. W. Turner's Source of the Arveron in the Valley of Chamouni Savoy, 1816. The position of its front end fluctuated over the years but its maximum extent was in the mid-19th century. This episode inspired the 1991 opera Mer de glace by Australian composer Richard Meale to a libretto by his compatriot David Malouf.

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