Lago di Miage (Lac de Miage)

Where the Miage Glacier bends across the head of Val Veny, meltwater pools in Lake Miage, a proglacial lake framed by dark moraine, ice and seracs. Lac de Miage is its name in the valley's French toponymy.

Why it matters

The Miage Glacier is a debris-covered ice stream flowing from the Bionnassay pass; its front edge appears here in ice cliffs, grey meltwater and deposited boulders. The glacier has drawn glaciologists for over a century, and the lake offers a record of the changing ice margin.

What to notice

The lake's changing colour reflects suspended glacial rock flour and the effects of debris cover. A moraine ridge along the shore marks a former ice margin. Calved blocks can float on the water as the shoreline changes. Downstream, braided outwash at Pont Combal shows sediment carried by the Dora di Veny.

Context and history

Val Veny was carved by two great ice flows, the Miage and the Brenva, and the Miage tongue still descends almost to the valley floor from the slopes below the Aiguilles de Bionnassay. The lake occupies a hollow at the glacier's southern end and has shifted in size and shape across decades of retreat, which is why older photographs show a different shoreline than today's. Victorian travellers and early alpinists already photographed the green meadows of Combal against the black moraine, making this one of the classical images of Alpine glaciology. The lake occupies the upper Val Veny at roughly 2,040 metres, where the glacier's ice meets its moraine.