This is how impressively you can feel the glacier melting in Switzerland in 2024

Time out

How will the glaciers fare in 2024? We want to take a look for ourselves with a mountain guide on the Fee glacier above Saas-Fee. He says: “It’s a process that hurts.”

The condition of the glaciers in the Saas Valley was previously measured at 37 locations. “Today there are still three,” says Aldo Lomatter. These are the Fee Glacier, Hohlaub Glacier and Allalin Glacier. The now 70-year-old mountain guide was still there during the measurements himself.

After the two devastating glacier years of 2022 and 2023, we want to see for ourselves how the ice giants are doing on the Fee Glacier this year. Already on the journey with the gondola, memories come flooding back to Lomatter: “The glacier came this far in 1822,” he says a little later, “as a girl, my mother used to fetch ice to cool food and I was still ice climbing there myself as a teenager .» There is no longer any sign of the glacier in these places; a lush mountain forest grows.

After all, the year 2024 started well for the glaciers. There was even talk of “one of the best winter seasons for glaciers of all time”. As recently as May, the motto was: “A good winter – Swiss glaciers start the summer with a cushion of snow.” Then came the warm summer. The protective shield of snow acquiesced to the high temperatures and the ice continued to melt. Lomatter’s forecast: “In 10 to 15 years things will look bad up here. Everything up there will be gone.”

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