Col de la Met, Val-Cenis Live Cam

The top station at Col de la Met stands at 2,750 metres above Val-Cenis, in the Vanoise on the French side of the Alps. The webcam looks out over a sea of cloud filling the valley below.

The lake on the other side of the ridge is not natural. A dam finished in 1968 flooded the plain of the Mont Cenis pass, drowning the old hospice road, and the reservoir now holds water for power stations on both sides of the border.

That border moved within living memory: the treaty of 1947 transferred the pass and its plateau from Italy to France. The resort below works pistes down to the villages of the Haute Maurienne, and the road over the col is shut by snow for half the year.