Low snowpack and glaciers melting at an alarming rate in Europe’s heatwaves have put some classic alpine hiking trails off limits.
Usually, in the height of summer, tourists flock to the Alps and look for well-trodden paths to some of their peaks. But with warmer temperatures, which scientists say are driven by climate change, accelerating the melting of glaciers and permafrost, routes that are usually safe at this time of year now face dangers like falling rocks released from the ice.
“Currently, in the Alps, there are warnings for a dozen peaks, including iconic ones like the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc,” said Pierre Mathey, head of the association of Swiss mountain guides.
He said this was happening much earlier in the season than normal. “We usually see these closures in August, but now they’ve started in late June and are continuing into July.”
Representatives of mountain guides who usually lead thousands of hikers to Europe’s highest peak announced last week that they would suspend ascents on the most classic routes of Mont Blanc, which lies between France, Italy and Switzerland.
Guide Alpine Italiane said on its Facebook page that “particularly delicate conditions” caused by high temperatures had made it necessary to postpone the ascents.
Mountain guides have also refrained, reportedly for the first time in a century, from offering hikes along the classic route to Switzerland’s Jungfrau peak. And they have advised against hiking routes on the Italian and Swiss sides of the pyramid-shaped Matterhorn peak.
Ezio Marlier, president of the guide association of the Aosta Valley, said that having to move away from the routes most coveted by tourists was a blow after the Covid slowdown. “It’s not easy … after two almost empty seasons to decide to stop work,” he said.
He stressed that the Italian Alpine region had only closed two of them and that there were many other impressive and safe routes to take. But he lamented that many people canceled their trip when they learned their preferred route was off limits.
“There’s a lot of other things to do, but usually when people want Mont Blanc, they want Mont Blanc,” Marlier said.
Climbing some of the thousands of glaciers that dot Europe’s largest mountain range is also proving more difficult.
“The glaciers are in a state where they normally are at the end of summer or even later,” said Andreas Linsbauer, a glaciologist at the University of Zurich. “We are confident that we will break the record for negative melts.”
He said a combination of factors was contributing to a “really extreme” summer, which started with exceptionally little snowfall last winter, meaning there was less to protect the glaciers.
Sahara sand erupted earlier this year, darkening the snow, causing it to melt faster. And heat waves hit Europe in May, June and July, sending temperatures soaring even at high altitudes.
Rapid melting can make glaciers more dangerous, as seen with the sudden collapse of Italy’s previously seemingly harmless Marmolada Glacier this month, in which 11 people died when the ice and the rock rushed down the mountain.
Although scientists have yet to draw clear conclusions about what caused the disaster, one theory is that meltwater may have reached the point where the glacier froze into the rock, loosening its grip.
Mylene Jacquemart, a glacier and mountain hazard researcher at the Swiss university ETH Zurich, said there were many unknowns about the catastrophe. “But the overall theme is certainly that more meltwater … makes things more complicated and potentially more dangerous.”
Mathey also expressed concern that meltwater seeping under a glacier poses an “additional, invisible threat.” But despite the challenges, he expressed confidence that the guides will find solutions, looking for alternative routes to continue showing the Alpine splendor.
“Resilience is really in the DNA of mountain guides,” as is adaptability, he said. “Humans must adapt to nature and the mountains, not the other way around.”