The Mount Rosa range, with its highest peak, the Punta Dufour, at 4,634 metres, has nine of the 20 highest summits in the Alps, all of which were climbed in the eighteen hundreds.
The east face, with its 2,000 metres of ice and rock which descend into the Macugnafa valley and the Novara plain, is said to be the highest in the Alps and has characteristics which, because of the level of difficulty and dangerous nature, is considered almost Himalayan.