The Grossglockner is, at 3,798 metres above the Adriatic (12,461 ft), the highest mountain of Austria and the highest mountain in the Alps east of the Brenner Pass. It is part of the larger Glockner Group of the Hohe Tauern range, situated along the main ridge of the Central Eastern Alps and the Alpine divide. The Pasterze, Austria's most extended glacier, lies on the Grossglockner's eastern slope.
The characteristically pyramid-shaped peak actually consists of two pinnacles, the Grossglockner and the Kleinglockner (3,770 m (12,370 ft), from German: klein, "small"), separated by a saddle-like formation known as the Glocknerscharte.
The Grossglockner lies on the border between the Austrian states of Carinthia and Tyrol (East Tyrol). The peak is part of the Glocknerkamm ridge in the Glockner Group that branches off the main chain of the Alps at Mt. Eiskögele, heading in a southeasterly direction and forming the boundary between the East Tyrolean municipality of Kals am Großglockner, about 8 km (5.0 mi) in the southwest at 1,324 m (4,344 ft), and Carinthian Heiligenblut, about 12 km (7.5 mi) in the northeast at 1,291 m (4,236 ft). This boundary is also the watershed between the Kals Valley and its Teischnitz and Ködnitz side valleys on the Tyrolean side and the Möll Valley with the Pasterze glacier on the Carinthian side. The region around the mountain has formed part of the Grossglockner-Pasterze special protected area within the High Tauern National Park since 1986.
The Glockner is the highest mountain in the Alps east of the Ortler range, about 175 km (109 mi) away, and, after Mont Blanc, has the second greatest topographic isolation of all mountains in the Alps. Even its topographic prominence, at 2,424 metres (7,953 ft), is the second highest after Mont Blanc in the entire Alps (see the list of Alpine peaks by prominence). That makes it one of the most independent peaks in the Alps. The view from the Grossglockner summit is one of the farthest of all mountains in the Eastern Alps. It ranges out to 220 km (140 mi) or, taking account of atmospheric refraction, almost 240 km (150 mi). Its view over more than 150,000 km2 (58,000 sq mi) of the earth's surface reaches as far as the Upper Swabian Plateau in the northwest, to Regensburg and the peaks of the Bohemian Forest in the north, to Mt. Ortler in the west, to the Padan Plain in the south, and to Mt. Triglav and the Totes Gebirge range in the east.