The Swiss Alps Reckon With the Threat of Collapsing Glaciers

[Zorro]

A year after the town of Blatten was destroyed, Switzerland faces difficult decisions over the risks and costs of living in the mountains.

It is springtime in the Lötschental Valley, and yellow dandelions are blooming under the shadow of the Swiss Alps. The landscape is an idyll of snowcapped peaks and meltwater streams, but the changing season brings with it dangers.

Heavy rains in late April caused a mudslide that damaged the foundations of a 35-meter (115-foot) bridge hanging across a nearby gorge. It could take two or three years to fix, meaning that some popular hiking routes that lead through the valley are likely to be shut this summer.

“We don’t live in an easy landscape,” said Lukas Kalbermatten, a 55-year-old hotelier, who has lived in the area, in the southern canton of Valais, all his life. “People ask us all the time: isn’t it dangerous to live there? I tell them life is dangerous — but it’s dangerous for everybody.”

A nearby slope shows just how perilous it can be. A year ago, on May 28, 2025, an entire section of the mountain and the Birch glacier that lay on it collapsed. Within minutes, the village of Blatten, where Lukas and generations of Kalbermattens before him were born, was obliterated, along with his Edelweiss Hotel.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2026-swiss-glacier-collapse-risk/?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc4MDE4MTUwMCwiZXhwIjoxNzgwNzg2MzAwLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJURlBUQTJLR1pBSlcwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDNjgyQTUwQzJCRDM0MTFCQTgwQjEwQjZEQjczQzM1MSJ9.IBxYd4k7T_61Sh41vm5N8kYp7civuS7Qp_plF-gdNEU