Hikes to the glaciers of the Alps

Good to know about glaciers

In Switzerland the GLAMOS monitoring network measures glacier volume every year, and the recent figures give a sense of how fast the retreat is: about 6 per cent lost in 2022, the worst result since measurements began, about 4 per cent in 2023 and about 3 per cent in 2025, close to a quarter of the volume in total between 2015 and 2025. Along the path to the Morteratsch, signs mark where the glacier tongue reached in past years: at its greatest extent, shortly after 1860, it stopped a few dozen metres from today's railway station, and since then it has retreated by about two and a half kilometres. The Aletsch, about 23 kilometres long, is still the longest glacier in the Alps, but it too grows shorter every year.

The hikes on this page reach the edge of the glacier, and that is where they should stop: walking on the ice, among crevasses often hidden by snow, is mountaineering, and it requires equipment, a rope and the skills to use them. Even on solid ground it is wise not to linger beneath ice fronts and seracs, which collapse unpredictably, above all on hot days, when meltwater runs between ice and rock. Lakes that form on glaciers or in front of their snouts can grow quickly, as happened in 2002 on the Belvedere, where the Lago Effimero led to a state of emergency being declared, so they are always best watched from a distance.