Matterhorn, in its own contour lines.

What the print holds

Matterhorn on paper

At the default frame, six kilometres across, the summit sits in the middle of the sheet and the rings close in on it from every side. The innermost of them come out nearly square rather than round, and that is the mountain's shape showing through: four steep faces looking north, south, east and west, and four ridges at the corners where the lines turn. The Hörnli, the ordinary way up from the Swiss side, is the north-eastern corner; the Lion ridge, the Italian route, is the south-western one.

Outside that knot the lines open out. Where the rock gives way to the glaciers that wrap the mountain, the spacing widens and the lines run smoother, because ice fills the hollows and evens out the ground beneath it. Further out they tighten again where the valleys fall away towards Zermatt in the north-east and Breuil-Cervinia in the south. Neither village is inside this frame, but the ground falling towards both is, which is why the sheet reads as a mountain standing over two countries rather than a peak floating on paper.

The print draws a contour every fifty metres at this frame and makes every fifth one heavier, so each heavy line is 250 metres of height. Count the heavy rings from the glacier to the top and you have counted the climb. The mark at the summit carries the surveyed height, 4,478 metres; the elevation data itself reads the top a little lower, because it is too coarse to hold a point that sharp, and that is why the figure on the sheet comes from the survey and not from the grid.

Beneath the name the line is yours: the date you stood on top, or the summer you only looked at it, and a named point at the hut you set off from if you like.