Visit Mont Blanc from a computer

MONT BLANC and the Mercantour National Park are two of the latest additions to be mapped by the increasingly mis-titled Google Street View.

The Mont Blanc project has been carried out in part to continue to visually map the decline of glaciers on western Europe’s highest peak as this video explains.

Google teamed up with mountain guides to document several routes on the Mont Blanc massif and record the history of exploration in the area. Here is a good starting point for virtual treks.

Over the past few months Google workers have also taken to the hills of the Mercantour National Park, using a rucksack camera called a Trekker to record walks.

The Mercantour is the first national park in France to be given such a treatment, with 19 routes captures by the multi-angled camera.

While the Google Street View car, recognised around the world for capturing some pretty strange goings-on, has been left behind, not all the work has been done on foot (the shadow of a skimobile appears in some of the winter shots).

To see it, go to Google Street View and drag across the yellow figure onto the walking routes.

The Mercantour was designated a national park in 1979. March’s Connexion has a feature on the development of France’s national parks.

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Photo:Google Street View