Mont Blanc, the monarch of the "white giants" - it has always inspired the imaginations of mountain devotees from near and far. Images effervesce in the minds of Alpinists like soap bubbles: a good dozen ice-encompassed, cornice-crowned, four-thousand-metre summits, surrounded by a wild maze of toast-coloured, vertical towers of granite, and between them, rivers of ice, shrivelled and split in crazy shapes. However, if you think the highest mountain range in Europe is only a refuge for extreme climbers and hard-boiled mountain climbers, you are mistaken: especially hikers can find a variety of breathtaking trails and mountain paths in the valley and mountain pasture area all around the "Chief" of the Alps. The competent area expert, Hartmut Eberlein, presents in this revised edition of his hiking guide "Mont Blanc", 49 carefully-selected tours which are almost exclusively tailored to the pleasure-oriented mountain hiker. Some of the tours lead close to cliffs and ice, and many naturally touch on the summits, which are worth the trip, but none exceed the 3000-metre mark. In addition, Hartmut Eberlein describes the popular "Tour du Mont Blanc": 17 stages, which can also be walked by novice hikers. A tour description, coloured hiking maps to a scale of 1:50 000 with the course of the route illustrated, a brief, thorough description of the trail and a colour photo for each of the 50 recommended tours aid the hiker in the planning as well as the execution of his or her excursion. Several tips and pieces of information enhance this entirely successful hiking guide to make it a valuable companion through the fascinating mountain world all around Mont Blanc.