This month's vertigo-busting winner was taken by Aoife Roche looking towards Italy on the slopes of Aiguille du Midi, a mountain in the Mont Blanc massif in the French Alps. Aoife tells us it takes two cable cars to get to this point and you can well believe it. It seems only natural you'd have to expend some effort to get up here; it's the kind of mind-bogglingly beautiful landscape that human beings should only ever feel unworthy and temporary guests in.

Ranjit Dhaliwal, the Guardian's Assistant Picture Editor and the man who's fast making the role of judging our monthly competition his own, liked it too:

"The photographer has conveyed the epic scale of these mountains by including the people in the foreground. The snow is slightly on the dark side (correctable with photo-editing software), but it's a well-composed image, and the shapes add an extra dimension."

Congratulations to Aoife who bags herself a blown-up canvas print of her winning image, courtesy of Point 101. The standard of the competition continues to rise and you can see a gallery of the January contenders that pushed Aoife all the way here.

Entering the photo of the month competition

You don't have to be an expert to enter the competition - all travel photos are accepted as long as they're at least 435 pixels wide (for landscape shots) or 455 pixels high (for portrait format). A shortlist of the Been there team's favourite entries will be published as a gallery each month on the Travel site.

If you think you can scale similar photographic heights and fancy a tilt at next month's prize, take a look at our guidelines and then forward your snaps to been.there.photos@guardian.co.uk.

Photo of the month hall of fame: see previous winners