On the trail of the melting ice
Ice bridge on the Aletsch Glacier Photo: Picture Alliance
The Great Aletsch Glacier in Switzerland is the longest and largest in the Alps.
The beauty of this natural phenomenon is as overwhelming as the visible signs of climate change are terrifying.
January 3, 2023
TEXT and additional PHOTOS: Jessica Jungbauer
“What a summer, much too hot .
.
.” – “And the last winter first!
We hardly had any snow.” Shaking their heads, the mountain railway operator and a woman from the gondola look into the distance while we glide up over the treetops, from the valley to the Riederalp in the Swiss canton of Valais.
A conversation about the weather like every day.
And yet everything is different this year: the warmest summer in Europe since records began.
The worst drought in 500 years with historic low water in the Rhine and Po.
Forest fires from Saxon Switzerland to southern France.
We are on the way to the Great Aletsch Glacier, the longest and largest glacier in the Alps.
It too is suffering from the climate crisis and is melting faster than ever before.
Up to 20 centimeters - per day.
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The mountain villages on the sunny plateau are car-free, only individual electric vehicles are allowed.
Horses graze in the pasture, paragliders enjoy the view of the valley.
The air is clear, the sun is shining.
The Riederalp is part of the Aletsch Arena.
We spend the night here and take a mountain railway to the Moosfluh viewpoint, one of the four places from where you can explore the Aletsch area in the Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Arrived at 2333 meters, the sight of the Great Aletsch Glacier is unreal, like a lunar landscape, so barren and grey.
From up here, the crevasses, several meters wide, look like fine pencil lines.
The only thing you hear: the waterfalls.
"Melt water," says our guide David Kestens.
"See the green edge?" He points to a line that is clearly visible on the rocks.
"That's how high the glacier was when it last peaked in 1860." About 150 meters higher than today.
Since then, the Great Aletsch has shrunk from 26 billion tons to currently 11 billion tons.
It is most powerful at its centre, Konkordiaplatz, with a thickness of 800 metres.
A place that is impressive and depressing at the same time.
The Great Aletsch Glacier in the Alps.
Since its peak in 1860, it has shrunk by 150 meters.
Close-up: like a lunar landscape made of ice
“The glaciers can no longer be saved.
This is utopia.
.
.” Kestens explains: “It takes ten meters of snow to make one meter of ice.
But the snow has to be ten meters thick for ten years.
Only in this way can it condense and turn to ice.
But we don't have any more snow at 4,000 meters.” Glaciers are in danger all over the world.
ETH Zurich only published new figures in August: between 1931 and 2016, more than half of the ice mass in Switzerland disappeared.
"Our glaciologists assume that from here to Konkordiaplatz - that's about 15 kilometers - everything will have disappeared by the end of the century if the temperature increase is not limited to 2 degrees." And from where we are standing on the Moosfluh, you won't be able to see anything at all in 30 years.
"The glue that holds all the stones together here is the ice."
DAVID KESTENS
Kestens points to the mountain panorama around us with more than 20 of a total of 45 Valais four-thousanders.
“There is almost no snow on the peaks.
But it is important to protect the ice.” Why are glaciers so important?
“First, because they are the simplest water storage.
Secondly, because of its coldness, the glacier also makes the surrounding area colder.
When he's gone, the temperature here will rise even faster," says Kestens.
“If you imagine the North Pole as a glacier, then we have a huge problem.
But without the Aletsch Glacier we will probably still survive.”
Local problems are caused by melting glaciers due to rock falls and the thawing of the permafrost.
"The glue that holds all the stones together here is the ice.
If the ice melts because it gets too warm, there is no more glue.
Then a mountain is just a heap of stones falling down.” This is also happening on the Matterhorn, the most famous mountain in Switzerland.
It is closed during our trip, mountain guides no longer do tours due to the risk of falling rocks.
While elsewhere the reservoirs run empty, here the Gebidem reservoir even overflows.
There is so much meltwater that you can't stop it.
While the glacier water flows into the valley in abundance, the mountain huts struggle with water shortages due to the lack of rain and falling groundwater levels.
Kurt Steiner has been documenting the shrinking of the ice sheet for years.
On the way back we hike to Riederalp.
"The color of the grass is actually much greener and not ocher at this time," says Kestens.
We meet an elderly gentleman with an SLR camera and a photo book in his hand.
Kurt Steiner tells us that he has been to the Great Aletsch Glacier 52 times.
Since 2012 he has been documenting the melting of the glacier with his photos.
“I determine the shooting locations and put a flag on the GPS.
So I can take the same picture again.” Why is he doing this?
"In the city we don't really see the changes [caused by the climate crisis], but here you really see what's happening."
He points to the Great Aletsch Glacier and leafs through his illustrated book.
“The problem is that the melting process is accelerating.
It's not linear, it's exponential.” After his first visit 10 years ago, he quickly noticed further effects of the climate crisis.
This summer, for example, he had never seen the Vordersee so deep, and the alpine roses bloomed three weeks too early.
“We have to do something about climate change,” he says.
“We have to become CO₂-free.
There's no way around it."
"The problem is that the melting process is accelerating."
KURT STEINER
He originally did something completely different professionally, but environmental protection was always close to his heart.
“If the drought continues this year, you will have massive problems here.
If they let the remaining water through the snow cannons..." Steiner continued.
“In November, the entire slope has artificial snow.
What do people do in this ski resort when there is no water and no snow?”
Happy cows on the way back to Riederalp
In the distance you can see the Matterhorn, the most famous mountain in Switzerland.
Lunch at the Riederfurka mountain restaurant, which has 13 Gault Millau points and is part of the Slow Food network.
Alpine dishes such as rösti with egg and truffle, creamy barley risotto with chard or hand-turned tortelloni with sheep's mountain cheese are served in a rustic ambience.
Chef Pietro Catalano and his team work with products from the area, ferment a lot and, for example, produce their own spruce oil.
They too are feeling the effects of the climate crisis.
“The raspberries were dried up this year and much too small.
There were almost no blueberries and no porcini mushrooms either,” says Catalano of that summer.
"That was extreme.
The cows gave less milk for butter and cheese, they had less fresh grass to eat.” How does this affect the kitchen?
"If we see, for example, that there are few porcini mushrooms in the region,
Let's think about which aromas from the forest could be similar ... Instead of a porcini mushroom risotto, we're now cooking a Carnaroli risotto with spruce oil, along with fermented hazelnut pesto, refined with smoked cream cheese and a little Arabica coffee powder and roasted hazelnuts," he says.
"The taste is very authentic."
Sustainable food from local production in the Berghütte Restaurant Riederfurka, here: Rösti
The Pro Natura Center Aletsch is the environmental education center of the oldest nature conservation organization in Switzerland and is located in Villa Cassel, the former summer residence of Sir Ernest Cassel, a financial adviser to the English king.
Even Winston Churchill relaxed here.
In 2019, the Victorian villa was renovated in such a way that it can be operated in a climate-neutral manner with an air-to-water heat pump and a photovoltaic system on two buildings in the valley.
Martina Oettli from the center welcomes us with a walk around the house.
"We are in the immediate vicinity of the Aletsch Forest, which has been a nature reserve since 1933," says Oettli.
"The special thing about it is that the protected area grows a little every year because the glacier is retreating."
Oettli holds a stuffed bird in his hand.
"That's a nutcracker, the characteristic bird in the Aletsch Forest." She points to a tree.
"See the cones on the floor?
There is an Arve.
It grows in unusual locations like here on stones.
It is extremely resilient and grows very old.” Some here are around 700 years old.
And this is where the climate crisis comes into play.
"The nutcracker and Swiss stone pine form a symbiosis," explains Oettli.
“The nutcracker collects nuts and hides them as winter supplies.
He finds up to 80 percent of his hiding spots;
new stone pines can grow from the rest.” The consequence of the warming: “Plants and animals have to climb higher so that they don’t get too warm.
The further up, the less space there is for everyone.”
The Pro Natura Center Aletsch is located in the old Victorian Villa Cassel.
In the Villa Cassel there is an impressive multimedia exhibition that illustrates the development of the glacier over time in a model installation.
By the mid-19th century, the situation was reversed: people were afraid of the Great Aletsch Glacier because it expanded too much during the Little Ice Age.
They tried to stop the glacier with pleading processions.
Oettli is responsible for environmental education at the Pro Natura Center Aletsch.
The center offers its own glacier excursions.
How do children and young people react to this?
“They are thrilled once they have stood on the glacier.” Some write down their impressions, like a little French boy who Oettli particularly remembers.
On his note was "Je suis triste" - "I'm sad".
View of the valley: Plants and animals have to adapt to higher temperatures.
The next day we meet Dominik Nellen.
The mountain guide once made a spectacular discovery: He discovered an airplane that had crashed in 1968 - and emerged more than 50 years later from the eternal ice of the Great Aletsch Glacier.
“At first it looked like two backpacks from a distance.
But then we saw that it was an airplane,” says Nellen.
Nellen often offers this 2-day tour, starting from the Jungfraujoch.
“The glacier is still covered with snow up there.
A beautiful, imposing glacier world.
With an overnight stay in the Konkordiahütte and from there to the Märjelensee.”
But this hot summer meant that he had to take a different route than usual.
"It was relatively warm on the Jungfraujoch, at 3500 meters we had 4 degrees.
That's very hot considering you're so high.
Because we had very little snow last winter and it was very warm in the summer, many crevasses are no longer covered with snow and you have to work around them,” he says.
"So I went further west than usual with my group, and that route took us to the wreckage of the crashed plane."
Mountain guide David Kestens has noticed the changes caused by climate change for years.
Nellen was born on the Riederalp, his father has also been a mountain guide for over 40 years.
They run the Riederalp mountaineering school.
The Great Aletsch Glacier is his “home glacier”.
"The glacier melt affects me a lot," says Nellen.
“In the lower part of the glacier, we have been taking ablation measurements for over 20 years: we drill a hole, put ablation rods in, connect them with chains and barb them so that the meltwater cannot drive them up.
When you see how much of it melts every week in the summer, it hurts.”
Nellen experienced the Great Aletsch Glacier as a child.
He never would have thought that one day his homeland would make the global headlines - but if the finding of an airplane shows people anything, it is that the climate crisis is already here.
“In order to be able to offer the day tours in the lowest part of the glacier at all, we have to install fixed ropes.
As the glacier melts, more and more rocks are exposed.
You just go down there now.” He estimates that in recent years it has been around five to seven meters in height and 80 meters in length.
"When you then know that you've actually been on the ice for a long time ... Every step you take there hurts."
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