Jungfrau supplies most of the ice for the Grosser Aletsch Glacier

Aletsch is the largest glacier in the Alps... covering 120 square kilometres. In the last 120 years, it has lost one half of its area... and two-thirds its volume. We wanted to see it before it disappears. It's just down the road from here... has a UNESCO rating... it was a sunny morning... so we jumped in the car and headed for Betten. Our first chairlift (gondola style) took us to the lovely alpine village of Bettmeralp... and the second chairlift took us to the top of the range at Bettmerhorn (2647 metres). The air was cleaner than usual... and looking 30 klms up the valley... there was the Matterhorn... on her best behaviour giving all visitors a clear view.

We walked over the ridge to view the Aletsch Glacier... it made a wonderful sight... sitting 1,000 metres below in a narrow valley. We had heard that ice from the Jungfrau fed into the Aletsch Glacier... so we asked some knowledgeable looking people if you could see the Jungfrau from here. We had travelled 136 road kilometres to get from Grindlewald to Brig... so we were expecting a speck on the horizon. "Yes", said our knowledgeable looking man. "It's that great big mountain poking its head around the corner. Walk half a kilometre down the track and you will get a much better view." The track ran across the face of a scree... but in good condition. We had a great view after half a kilometre... and were amazed at how close it was... it looked to be only 10 kilometres away. We changed our walking plans and decided to continue down the trail to the bottom of the valley... get as close to the glacial ice... from the top of the mountain, we could see the bottom trail... it looked quite close to the ice... and make our way back to the alpine town to rejoin the gondola chairlift. We ended taking 4 hours of rugged walking... but provided a day we will remember for a long time.

Our first challenge arose when the good track petered out and became a trail of red stripes of paint on the big boulders on the scree... probably our most difficult walking conditions so far. There were numerous signs telling walkers to be aware of rolling rocks. At one point the path provided a concrete roof for protection against landslides. We descended 600 metres to the bottom trail but were not near the ice... another 400 metres below. We walked along Europe's biggest glacier... on an almost deserted track... in a challenging environment... it was a great walk. This glacier moves at a speed of one metre per year. We learned that 10 years are needed to compact a snowflake into solid glacial ice. The structure of the ice changes dramatically... 10 cubic metres of packed snow is concentrated into one cubic centimetre of glacial ice.

Tomorrow, we depart Switzerland and focus on France. In our valley, the locals have been French speakers... good practice for tomorrow and the next few weeks.