Located between the Tarn and Lot deep valleys, the Mont-Lozère is the highest point of the Cevennes and of Lozère, the departement to which the mountain has given it's name.

The Finiels summit reaches 1700 m in altitude.

It is a granite massif bordered by a limestone plateau and schist mountains. This large variety of rock types has led to the developement of a diverse landscape.

Villages lay in valleys and the high altitude hamlets make up part of the landscape. These hamlets, abandoned nearly a century ago, are remarkable examples of the traditional granite and limestone architecture of the area. They evoke local history and are marked by the prescence of the knights of Malta who settled here on returning from the Crusades ; rebellious huguenots, known as the Camisards, who fought to save their religion at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

Vast open expanses are home to the protected flora and fauna of the Cevennes National Park.

Mountain agriculture still exists now mostly in the form of cattle breeding. A few flocks of sheep (from the southern languedoc region) still move to summer pastures known as transhumance on Mont-Lozère, travelling along the thousand year old "drailles" (paths used for transhumance).

The scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson crossed the Cevennes by foot, accompanied by his donkey, in 1878 from the 22nd september to the 3rd october. There he recounts his arrival on the plateau of Mont-Lozère :

" Although is had been long desired, it was quite unexpectedly at last that my eyes rose above the summit. A step that seemed no way more decisive than many other steps that had preceded it - and, 'like stout Cortez when, with eagle eyes, he stared on the Pacific,' I took possession, in my own name, of a new quarter of the world. For behold, instead of the gross turf rampart I had been mounting for so long, a view into the hazy air of heaven, and a land of intricate blue hills below my feet. "