Rhône Glacier

The Rhône Glacier is a glacier in the Swiss Alps, in the canton of Valais between the Grimsel and Furka passes in the Urner Alps, and it is the source of the Rhône River and a major contributor to Lake Geneva. It ranges in elevation from about 2,200 meters at its lowest point to 3,630 meters near the peak of the Dammastock, and by 1973 it covered roughly 17.6 square kilometers, though its length has since fallen from 9.09 kilometers in 1879 to 7.65 kilometers in 2016. The glacier is reachable only in summer, for about 120 days a year via the Furka Pass road, and it has lost around 60 percent of its volume since 1850, with the melt rate between 2023 and 2024 running ahead of the previous decade's average. In recent years its lower reaches have been covered with protective white blankets in summer, a measure estimated to cut melting by about 70 percent.