The 12.9km long Gorner Glaciier seen from Gornregrad mountain station. It flows from the Monte Rosa massif past the foot of the Breithorn and Dufourspitze towards the Matterhorn. Photograph: Barbara McCarthyHiking along the narrow path above the Gorner glacier, outside the high Alpine town of Zermatt, I feel, as Mark Twain described, “tolerably insignificant.” A thousand metres below me, the 12.
Ketscha’s thoughts mirror the findings of glaciologists. The Gorner glacier has been retreating since the end of the 19th century, more dramatically in recent years. “Almost all of the Alps 1,800 glaciers could disappear by 2100,” says Matthias Huss, a glaciologist and head of Glacier Monitoring Switzerland at the federal technology institute ETH Zurich.Up to 500 glaciers have disappeared already in the Alps, with over 10 per cent melting in the past five years.
“The only scalable solution to rapid glacial loss is cutting greenhouse emissions. But if we become a fossil-free society after 2050, we could still save much glacier ice, thus mitigating the most severe impacts,” he adds. Declared a Unesco world heritage site in 2001, it is one of the biggest nature attractions in Switzerland, with more than 700,000 visitors alone to the Jungfraujoch viewing point. “We want people to see the glacier, so they can build a relationship with it,” says Maurus Lauber, head of the Pro Natura Centre.