Digital Photography Info

The Aletsch-Jungfrau area picture gallery

I have published a new landscape picture gallery where you can see several pictures taken this month in Switzerland in the Aletsch-Jungfrau area, which is the most glaciated region of the Alps. Unfortunately global warming impacted this beautiful place heavily and the largest and longest glacier of the Alps is retreating very fast. The melting glacier makes mountaineering more difficult and dangerous what directly impacted our plans for this trip.

Firstly, the Aletsch glacier because of its size and rapid melting is a real maze and it is very difficult to find the way on unfrequented routes. This is because there are plenty of crevasses cutting the glacier in each direction which are too wide to leap across them (the bumps visible on the pictures taken over 300 ft above the glacier are in fact huge impassable ice blocks). I had with me the most recent edition of the Aletsch area topographic map issued in 2005 but the glacier range and routes marked on them have changed significantly.

Secondly, rapidly melting glaciers evaporate heavily in summer making the weather unstable and unpredictable. Even though the weather forecast is for sunny sky, there might be a local storm or clouds limiting visibility to a few feet what you can see on one of the pictures. When I reached the summit a big cloud covered everything around and then it started snowing , however there was beautiful weather 9,000 ft below.

Consequently during the whole trip to Switzerland this year I managed to conquer two summits 13,474 ft (4,107 m) and 13,864 ft (4,226 m) wandering around on the retreating glacier and taking pictures. I hope you will like them.

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