Ice grotto: If you want to see what a glacier looks like, you can come to the Valais Alps. Photo: Sierre-Anniviers Marketing / dpa-tmn (Sierre-Anniviers Marketing / dpa)
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Zinal (dpa / tmn) – Switzerland has been badly hit by the pandemic and is a corona risk area. Winter in the Valais Alps remains something very special. Because then the Zinal Glacier unfolds its full magic.
The glacier has ground thick stones into pebbles and dust, grinded slopes and left tons of rubble. If it weren’t for the snow, the group around mountain guide Daniel Ruppen would have to hike over unstable rubble, dust and remnants of dead ice.
Winter in the Valais Alps: Hotel with a view in Saint-Luc in the Val d’Anniviers. Photo: Deike Uhtenwoldt / dpa-tmn (Deike Uhtenwoldt / dpa)
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Fortunately, however, it is winter in the Valais Alps – even if it is not as tourism and lift operators would like. “It could snow again,” says Ruppen, who doesn’t even have snowshoes on. Today’s tour leads from Zinal, the last place in the French-speaking world
Val d’Anniviers, to the Zinal glacier along the Navisence mountain stream.
It’s five kilometers. That is also the reason why the increase is limited and Ruppen is advancing briskly. “Today is a day of rest for me,” he says happily.
Diverse shimmering ice: The glacier forms underground works of art. Photo: Deike Uhtenwoldt / dpa-tmn (Deike Uhtenwoldt / dpa)
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Up to the “eternal ice”
The 69-year-old is usually booked for summit ascents, climbing tours and paragliding. This sunny morning is about a visit to an ice grotto and a little local flavor.
Planet in the winter landscape: a nature trail in Saint-Luc explains the solar system. Photo: Deike Uhtenwoldt / dpa-tmn (Deike Uhtenwoldt / dpa)
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Ruppen shows the guests the four-thousand-meter Dent Blanche, Bishorn and Weisshorn. Then the guide gets serious and tells of an avalanche accident that ice climbers and rescue workers buried here 20 years ago. “Something can always happen; blocks of ice can also fall from the ceiling of the grotto,” warns Ruppen. “But at least that’s not very likely in winter.”
How an ice hole became a sight
View of the Matterhorn – the most famous mountain in the Valais Alps. Photo: Deike Uhtenwoldt / dpa-tmn (Deike Uhtenwoldt / dpa)
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A walk-in grotto has formed where the meltwater from the glacier collects and emerges as a navicence. Ruppen’s colleague Stéphane Albasini walked in for the first time almost 25 years ago.
Since then, he has been traded as an explorer, but is modest: “Many knew that there was a hole in the glacier. But nobody stopped because of it. A touring skier wants to get there as quickly as possible, ”he says.
View of the snow-covered Zinal in Valais – from here, travelers can set out to explore the glacier in winter. Photo: Deike Uhtenwoldt / dpa-tmn (Deike Uhtenwoldt / dpa)
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Once Albasini stopped when he was towing a group of teenage alpinists from Sierre. To provide a little variety, he suggested visiting the grotto and was then overwhelmed by the variety of shapes and colors inside. “Magnifique” was it, great.
In any case, the effect that Albasini’s descriptions had in the tourist office was magical: Large-scale photos of a turquoise underworld made the rounds. Albasini has been to the cave hundreds of times. “It’s different every year,” he says. Occasionally the visitors had to crawl into the cave, in times of poor snow the entrance is like a gate. To do this, ice blocks the size of a cupboard block the way and constantly reveal new ice chambers inside. The glacier thaws regularly.
Winter is the time for ice climbers in the mountains – recognizable here as a small point on the wall. Photo: Deike Uhtenwoldt / dpa-tmn (Deike Uhtenwoldt / dpa)
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A miracle that is slowly disappearing
“In summer you would need at least one umbrella in the grotto,” says Albasini. And probably another helmet. “The glacier continues to flow downwards and at the same time it melts, it loses around 25 meters every year.” According to a study by the ETH Zurich, the melting process could pick up speed and the Zinal glacier could lose around three kilometers by 2060. That would be almost half its length. However, the uncertainties in the calculations are great.
Active holidays in the Swiss Valais: snowshoe hikers on the Zinal glacier. Photo: Sierre-Anniviers Marketing / dpa-tmn (Sierre-Anniviers Marketing / dpa)
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One thing is certain: as soon as the avalanche warning service gives the green light and the weather cooperates, there are guided tours to the grotto. Without snowshoes, but with sticks in their hands, the Zinal hiking group finally reaches the grotto, balances on wobbly stones over the three-meter-wide meltwater and stands reverently. The light is diffuse, the ice has a bluish glow, it has stored millions of bubbles and accurately cut shapes. “That is wow and, above all, completely natural,” says Daniel Ruppen about the difference to artificial ice palaces.
The civil engineer has just explained the galloping melting of the glacier with an exponential function, now he too is silent and rubbing his hands warmly. Tomorrow he will go out again in the midday sun, then to climb. Without ice, snow and wet hands. It will be a beautiful Valais winter day.
Mountain guide Daniel Ruppen shows his guests the ice grotto in the Zinal glacier. Photo: Sierre-Anniviers Marketing / dpa-tmn (Sierre-Anniviers Marketing / dpa)
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