Aletsch Glacier — glacier
Christian David · CC BY-SA 4.0

Aletsch Glacier

Aletschgletscher

  • Elevation2,333 m
  • 2 min read
  • 46.442° N 8.077° E
  • UNESCO World Heritage
  • UNESCO natural beauty

Interesting facts

  • In 1678 the villagers of Fiesch and Fieschertal vowed to pray against the advancing glacier; in 2010 the Vatican approved changing the prayer to ask for its survival.
  • Since 1862 locals have walked an annual procession of about five hours to the Ernerwald chapel on 31 July to renew that vow.
  • In 2006 alone the glacier's tongue retreated a record 114.6 metres.
  • Of the 3.2 kilometres of length lost since 1870, about 1.3 kilometres have disappeared since 1980.
  • Projections suggest that by 2100 the glacier will keep only around a tenth of the ice mass it held in 2018.
  • The Märjelensee, a lake dammed by the glacier's eastern edge in the 19th century, repeatedly burst out through crevasses and caused damaging floods downstream.
  • The neighbouring Middle Aletsch Glacier, once a tributary, lost its connection to the main ice stream around the end of the 20th century.
  • One of the streams feeding Konkordiaplatz is the Ewigschneefeld, the "eternal snowfield", about 8 kilometres long.
  • The origin of the name Aletsch is unknown.
  • Meltwater flowing out through the Massa gorge drives a hydroelectric power station at Bitsch, above Naters.

Why it is worth it

The Great Aletsch Glacier is the largest glacier in the Alps: about 23 km long, covering some 80 square kilometres, and holding around 15 cubic kilometres of ice. It is born at Konkordiaplatz, a wide basin high in the Bernese Alps where four ice streams meet, fed from the flanks of the Jungfrau, the Mönch, the Fiescherhorn and the Aletschhorn. Here the ice is more than 900 metres thick. From Konkordiaplatz the glacier flows south-east at around 180 metres a year, then bends in a long curve towards the Rhône valley, before ending far below the tree line in the gorge of the Massa river.

The glacier's signature is its dark medial moraines, two stripes of rock debris that run down the middle of the ice for almost its entire length, traces of the tributary glaciers that merged upstream. Seen from the ridge above, the white river of ice with its dark lines, framed by peaks of four thousand metres, is one of the great sights of the Alps. The glacier is also a record of climate: it was far larger during the last ice age, when only the summits of the Bettmerhorn and Eggishorn rose above it, and it is shrinking now, having lost more than three kilometres of length since 1870. On the slopes above it grows the old Aletsch Forest, with moraines from past advances still visible among the trees.

The whole area belongs to the Jungfrau-Aletsch UNESCO World Heritage Site, inscribed in 2001. On the Riederfurka, between Riederalp and the glacier, stands the Villa Cassel, once a summer residence of wealthy and famous guests and now a centre of the conservation organisation Pro Natura with an exhibition about the region. A suspension bridge built in 2008 spans the Massa, allowing hikes from one side of the glacier's tongue to the other.

Getting there

The lower glacier is reached from the car-free resorts of Riederalp and Bettmeralp above the Rhône valley, served by cable cars from stations on the Matterhorn Gotthard railway such as Mörel and Betten; further cable cars climb to the viewpoints of the Bettmerhorn and Eggishorn. The upper glacier can be seen from the Jungfraujoch, reached by rail from Interlaken. Bern Airport (BRN) is the nearest airport, about 69 km away in a straight line.

Plan your visit

We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.

Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Valais 7The Most Beautiful Places in Switzerland 44The Most Beautiful Natural Wonders in Switzerland 7The Most Beautiful Glaciers 18The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Natural Wonders 38The UNESCO Sites of Exceptional Natural Beauty 77The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites 557The Most Beautiful Natural Wonders 580

From the encyclopaedia

The Aletsch Glacier or Great Aletsch Glacier is the largest glacier in the Alps. It has a length of about 23 km (14 mi) (2014), a volume of 15.4 km3 (3.7 cu mi) (2011), and covers about 81.7 km2 (2011) in the eastern Bernese Alps in the Swiss canton of Valais. The Aletsch Glacier is composed of four smaller glaciers converging at Konkordiaplatz, where its thickness was measured to reach a maximum of 905 metres (2,969 ft). It then continues towards the Rhône valley before giving birth to the Massa. The Aletsch Glacier is – like most glaciers in the world today – a retreating glacier. As of 2016, since 1980 it lost 1.3 kilometres (0.81 mi) of its length, since 1870 3.2 kilometres (2.0 mi), and lost also more than 300 metres (980 ft) of its thickness.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

46.44222, 8.07722per Wikidata