A pass in the Swiss Alps buried under ice since at least Roman times is resurfacing as the country, like the rest of Western Europe, has been hit by heatwaves.
Located at an altitude of 2800 meters in the Glacier 3000 ski area, in the Diablerets sector (west), this pass is now partially free of the ice that has covered it for at least 2000 years.
"
The pass will be entirely in the open air in a few weeks
," ski area officials said on Thursday.
In 2012, measurements revealed an ice thickness of about 15 meters at this location.
Read also“The melting of the ice is accelerating in all regions of the planet”
The summer of 2022, which followed a very dry winter, proved catastrophic for the glaciers, which have melted at an accelerated rate this year.
According to glaciologist Mauro Fischer, a researcher at the University of Bern, who regularly visits the site, the loss of thickness of the glaciers in the region where the pass is located will be on average 3 times higher this year compared to the last 10 are.
In the short term, these changes considerably modify the operation of the ski area because the pass, which was icy, made it possible to connect the glaciers of Scex Rouge and Tsanfleuron on which skiers let themselves slide.
Now, a strip of land separates the two glaciers.
"
We are planning to renew the facilities in this sector in the coming years, and one idea would be to shift the route of the current chairlift
,” explains ski lift director Bernhard Tschannen.
Read also Melting ice in Greenland: the dizzying predictions of American researchers
The melting of the glaciers makes them more unstable, which hinders the practice of snow sports and hiking, but it also allows the wreckage of planes and the bodies of people who have disappeared, sometimes for several decades, to emerge from the past.
In two weeks, two human skeletons were found in the canton of Valais (west).
Their identification is in progress.
According to the Swiss news agency ATS, the Valais police have a list of some 300 people missing since 1925, the vast majority of whom disappeared before DNA was used.
In July 2017, the Tsanfleuron glacier returned the bodies of a couple who disappeared in 1942. In June 2012, the Aletsch glacier also returned the bones of three brothers who died in 1926. More recently, last week, the wreckage of a plane that crashed in the Alps in 1968 has been discovered on the Aletsch Glacier.
On board were three people whose bodies had been recovered at the time, but not the wreckage.