Dent Blanche
French for 'white tooth' — descriptive of its sharp, often snow-covered summit pyramid above Evolène. The neighbouring Dent Noire ('black tooth') stands on the same ridge.
Striking four-ridged pyramid in the Val d'Hérens, considered one of the more serious 4000ers. Normal route is the south (Wandfluegrat) ridge from the Cabane de la Dent Blanche.
Climbed on 18 July 1862 by the south ridge — the Wandfluegrat — which remains the voie normale. The Dent Blanche is famously remote and committing for a 'normal' route; the Quatre Ânes ('Four Donkeys') tower on the upper ridge gave generations of climbers their first taste of serious exposed gendarme-climbing. Its great south face was the scene of the 1882 death of W. E. Gabbett and the guides Jean and Aloys Pollinger, an accident that prompted the Swiss Alpine Club to begin recording and studying mountain fatalities systematically.
Summit · huts that serve as bases for routes on this peak