"See the glaciers melting away" Feichten Things to Do Tip by lotharlerch

When investors started to install a Summer Skiing Area about 25 or so years ago all that what you see on these pictures was well covered with ice and when looking south into the Kaunertal the Weissseespitze appeared spotlessly white all the year round. But now this Summer Skiing business seems to terminate in a few years because the glaciers are dramatically melting away. There were always such changes before, around 1850 there was something of a "little Ice Age" and the glaciers were a multiple in size - it is well seen on old photographs and on the traces the glaciers have left in the landscape. Even in the cold summers of the 1970-ies the glaciers were growing considerably but now the "Global Warming" is blamed for the actual situation. But it was even warmer about 1000 years ago when Greenland was called Greenland by the Vikings and wine was grown in the South of Sweden. So there is still a hope that the dust produced by our technical progress will cause a "Global Cooling" compensating the "Global Warming" which is suspected of coming form the CO2 induced Greenhouse Effect...

The effects of the warming you can observe here are impressive indeed. To protect the last pieces of the glacier it is now partly covered by white plastic foils covering the last remaining ice to slow down the melting. Some of these foils are just covering gravel because of the permafrost undertneath which was stabilizing these slopes but now they can just glide away as landslides together with the buildings and other installations on the top of these slopes.