Glacial Advance

When the conditions are just right, when the nights are cold and the days are hot, a channel can develop in the middle of the longest glacier in Europe, the Aletsch—a channel twenty feet deep and seven miles long and wiggly like a snake that can’t decide north or south. Meltwater funnels down this trench, meltwater forms this trench, and if you should happen to be standing in the bottom of this seasonal river, called bédière in French, perhaps tiptoeing on a tiny ledge while the torrent streaks beneath the heel spikes of your crampons, the worst possible thing that could happen is a sudden surge of water from upstream. Maybe the sun peeks out from behind a cloud or an ice dam breaks, but all of a sudden, screaming around the corner, comes a tsunami of ice-cold and ice-filled water appearing like the color of windshield wiper fluid, bearing down to sweep you off.

From the high perspective of an Alpine chough, one of the clever