The Aletsch Glacier

The Aletsch is the biggest glacier in the Alps, and the thing that makes it extraordinary is that you can stand above it without any mountaineering at all. Three cable cars lift you from villages in the Valais to ridges at around 2,700 metres, and from each one the ice unrolls below in a slow grey-white curve, streaked with dark medial moraines that mark where tributary glaciers merged. The scale takes a while to register. What looks like a wrinkled road is a body of ice about twenty-three kilometres long, hundreds of metres deep, moving downhill fast enough to be measured and shrinking fast enough to be documented year by year in photographs pinned up at the viewpoints. It anchors the Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch UNESCO site, and the surrounding Aletsch Forest holds gnarled Swiss stone pines that have been growing beside the ice for centuries.

The landscape

• Eggishorn - the highest of the three viewpoints, reached from Fiesch, with the widest sweep of the ice.
• Bettmerhorn - a shorter lift with a small glacier exhibition at the top station.
• Moosfluh - the ridge above Riederalp, where the ground is visibly slumping as the ice retreats.
• The Aletsch Forest - ancient stone pines on the slopes above the glacier, walkable on marked trails.

When to go

June to October for clear ridge walking. The viewpoints run in winter too, with snow-covered approaches. Go early: cloud builds over the ice through the afternoon in summer, and the light is best in the first hours.

Before you go

The retreat is not an abstraction here. The ice has pulled back visibly within living memory, and the slopes at Moosfluh are slipping as the glacier that pressed against them thins. The walk between the three viewpoints is exposed and takes several hours, so check the weather rather than assuming a cable car means an easy day. Walking on the glacier itself needs a guide and equipment.

Nearby

Bettmeralp and Riederalp are car-free villages above the valley; the Rhone valley towns of Brig and Fiesch sit below.

Key facts