Tourism and landscape

Glaciers and white peaks draw visitors from around the world to places like Zermatt, the Jungfraujoch and the Aletsch region, part of a UNESCO World Heritage site. Many people in Switzerland see them as part of home.

As the ice retreats, paths, huts, lifts and roads built on or beside glaciers become unstable or unreachable. What is left in the valleys is rubble, new lakes and slowly returning vegetation.

For about 20 years, ski areas and ice grottoes have covered small patches of glacier with white fleece in summer. It can cut local melt by 50–70%, but it is expensive, limited to a few thousand square metres, and sheds microplastics. It cannot save a glacier.