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Alps: Western Alps
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The Alps are the dominant range of Europe and one of the top five mountain areas of the world in mountain scenery and climbing challenge. Although only containing about fifty major peaks over 4000m (13,123'), the Alps rise very steeply from low bases and feature extensive glaciation on thousands of their summits. Americans used to the mountains of the western United States will be amazed at the rugged, snowy and steep faces of the Alps, which put the Rockies to shame. It has even been said that high Alpine peaks rise as high above the snowline as ones in the Himalaya and the Andes.
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The Alps are generally divided into the Western Alps and the Eastern Alps. The division is along the line between Lake Constance and Lake Como, following the Rhine. The Western Alps are higher, but their central chain is shorter and curved; they are located in Italy, France and Switzerland. The Eastern Alps (main ridge system elongated and broad) belong to Austria, Germany, Italy, Liechtenstein, Slovenia and Switzerland. The highest peaks of the Western Alps are Mont Blanc, 4,808 metres (15,774 ft), Mont Blanc de Courmayeur 4,748 metres (15,577 ft), the Dufourspitze 4,634 metres (15,203 ft) and the other summits of the Monte Rosa group, and the Dom, 4,545 metres (14,911 ft). The highest peak in the Eastern Alps is Piz Bernina, 4,049 metres (13,284 ft).
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The Alps receive high precipitation on the windward (N) side, amounting to about 3000 mm (about 120 in) annually. This precipitation sustains the forests, and the runoff feeds several of the large rivers of Western Europe, such as the Rhine, Rhône, and Po rivers and the tributaries of the Danube (Inn and Drau rivers).
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From the French-Italian border region near the Mediterranean Sea, the Alps curve north and northeast as far as Vienna, Austria, forming a giant mountain spine that divides the central part of Western Europe into northern and southern portions. This division has done much to shape the nations, languages, and ways of life of Europe.
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The Alps cover three-fifths of the Swiss territory, making Switzerland the second most Alpine country after Austria, where the proportion reaches two-thirds. Setting aside that part of Graubunden which lies to the east of the Hinterrhein Valley - a high valley like the Engadin, which, with its extra-continental climate, is more typical of central Europe - the Swiss Alps, like the French ones, belong to the western Alpine group, that is, to the steepest and most contorted chain.
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In this view, a distinction between western and eastern fraction of Alps plays a functional character to territorial management and safeguard. Clearly, the eastern Alpine arch find natural and straight comparison to western one, both as to geologic and morphologic issues and as to artistic, cultural and traditional ones, which belong to resident local populations. It finds evidence, even if in the specificity of respective eco-systems and in the uniqueness of different cultural contexts, with other European and world mountain systems, many of those are already included in the World Heritage List.
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Western Alps