<p>The regulating role of glaciers on catchment run-off is of fundamental importance in sustaining people living in low lying areas. The reduction in glacierized areas under the effect of climate change disrupts the distribution and amount of run-off, threatening water supply, agriculture and hydropower. The prediction of these changes requires models that integrate hydrological, nivological and glaciological processes. In this work we propose a local model that combines the nivological and glaciological scales, developed with the aim of a subsequent integration in hydrological distributed models. The model was derived from mass balance, momentum balance and rheological equations and describes the formation and evolution of the snowpack and the firn below it. The model was applied at the site of Colle Gnifetti (Monte Rosa massif, 4400–4550 m a.s.l.). We obtained an average net accumulation of 0.26 · 10<sup>3</sup> kg m<sup>−2</sup> y<sup>−1</sup> to be compared with the observed net annual accumulation that increases from about 0.15 · 10<sup>3</sup> kg m<sup>−2</sup> y<sup>−1</sup> to about 1.2 · 10<sup>3</sup> kg m<sup>−2</sup> y<sup>−1</sup> moving from the north facing to the south facing slope. The model results confirm the strong influence of wind on snow accumulation and densification, observed also from ice cores. The conserved precipitation is made up mainly of snow deposited between May and September, when temperatures above melting point are also observed. Even tough the variability of annual snow accumulation is not well reproduced by the model, the modelled and observed firn densities show a good agreement up to the depth reached by the model with the available input data.</p>