It was the summer of 2022 that finally orphaned the Scex Rouge glacier, breaking the connection that linked it to its larger parent for millennia.
Only last year, three metres of ice covered a rocky saddle of land high up in the Swiss Alps, across which a monumental tongue of ice has crept down from the bigger Tsanfleuron glacier for as many as 5,000 years. But on a bright sunny day this week, a slushy isthmus the depth of an icy puddle was all that connected the two, as a long-hidden path opened up between them.
“We knew the pass would emerge one day,” said Bernhard Tschannen, chief executive of Glacier 3000, a ski resort that operates cable cars up to the glaciers on the Diablerets massif. “This year was dramatic,” he added. “We’ve lost about three times as much ice this year as we have on average in each of the last 10.”