In October 2020, during the pandemic times, I had a huge pleasure to visit wonderful Switzerland. This country is full of wonders, including massive mountains, crystal-clear lakes and the rivers.. of ice.
I spent 3 days with my friends by the largest glacier of The Alps - Aletschgletscher ("Gletscher" means "glacier" in German).
I started my hike in Bettmeralp - very charming village, with breathtaking views and no cars on its roads. During these days I was facing the real and purest power of nature in very diverse conditions - warm sunlight, dense clouds and fog, snowstorm and clear nightsky. I'll never forget my first meeting with Aletsch - I felt like my heart is literally going to stop.
The Aletsch is the largest Alpine glacier. It's length is about 22,6 km, and it covers around 81,7 square kilometers of the valley. The weight of The Titan (as it's called) is 27 billion tons.
It's flowing from couple of basins in the area of the Swiss four-thousanders - Jungfrau (4158), Monch (4107) and Fiescherhorn (4049). The rivers of ice join together at the place called the Konkordia square - you can extract with your eyes each "stream" basing on the dark lines on the surface of the glacier.
The Aletschgletscher is the real miracle. Unfortunately it's disappearing - very fast. Until 2100 all of the Alpine glaciers are supposed to melt due to the global warming.
On a hot sunny day even 60 000 litres of water can leave the glacier in one second. At the same time it can lose about 20 cm of heigh, when in 10 years one meter of fresh snow is turning into 1 centimeter of the ice.
The area of Aletsch is a part of the UNESCO World Heritage. We are losing it day by day. Second by second. It was both wonderful and terrible feeling to watch and photograph the landscape, as every taken picture is immediately becoming historic.
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The scarred surface of Aletsch.
One of the basins of Aletschgletscher on the slope of Jungfrau mountain, seen from Jungfraujoch pass (3463).
Four-thousanders: Monch and Jungfrau. Right behind the peaks The Aletschgletscher has it's basins.