Beyene Travel Blog

As I continue my journey to visit some of the worlds most fascinating geological locations across the world, I found myself in the Swiss Alps visiting the breathtaking Aletsch Glacier. Many of the worlds most beautiful mountain ranges, lakes, and valleys owe their brilliance to glaciation. The Aletsch Glaciers formed as a result of the accumulation and compaction of snow crystals to form giant ice and firn structures. As you look more into the land structure of this glacier, you will notice that the land underneath these ice structures were round and smooth, but landforms and mountains created as a result of glaciation are sharp and jagged. Within my journey through the glacier, I was able to learn and really took interest in zones of accumulation and zones of wastage. A zone of accumulation is at a higher elevation and colder temperature than the zone of wastage and is usually snow packed. As you go down slope, the temperature gets warmer and the snow begins to melt, exposing silt, firn, and different sediments along the way. As you get to the bottom of the slope, or at the zone of wastage, melting ice carries more silt, rocks, and other debris into the streams at the snout of the glacier. It's so interesting how something like an altitude change within a specific glacier can cause such a difference in the sediments, structures and general appearance to that area. The Aletsch Glacier is so vast and has tons of trails within its 14 mile radius, I was blown away by the beauty it withholds.

https://www.aletscharena.ch/nature-en/the-great-aletsch-glacier/