Glaciers

Mighty as they may be glaciers are ephemeral features. The Gorner Glacier has had a rough time of things in the four decades that I have known it. It has shrunk dramatically in length and depth which, for a student of its works like myself, is tragic.

Some glaciologists believe Alpine glaciers today are a relic of the Little Ice Age from the seventeenth to early ninteenth centuries. One of the things we shall observe is evidence of glacial advances in earlier centuries. And I shall show you photographs which illustrate how much more advanced the glaciers were even in relatively recent times. Geologically speaking it is not so long ago that Zermatt itself was buried deep under ice.

Some of the glacier gorges are stunning and you will have the opportunity to examine exquisite rock features carved by ice and water under the glaciers.