Swiss Hostel Offers View of Crumbling Peak as Glacier Retreats

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NYT/Reuters: Swiss Hostel Offers View of Crumbling Peak as Glacier Retreats
By REUTERS
Published: August 13, 2006

....Hansruedi Burgener has welcomed up to 800 people a day — twice the average number of visitors — to his remote mountain hostel in the Alps this summer.

They all hope to watch a rock the size of two Empire State Buildings collapse onto the canyon floor, about 650 feet below, as retreating glacier ice robs a cliff face on the eastern edge of a mountain, the Eiger, of its main support....

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Every few minutes or so, there is a surprisingly loud sound as a boulder comes thundering down, sending a cloud of dust into the air. The sharp crackle of smaller stones rolling down the cliff face is almost continuous.

The spectacle is a reminder that the Alps have been hit hard by rising temperatures, and it underscores warnings from scientists that thawing permafrost — the frozen soil that can glue mountains together — will cause more havoc.

Glaciers in the Alps may have lost up to a tenth of their volume in the hot 2003 summer alone, researchers at Zurich University have said, and the ice now only occupies a third to a half of its volume in 1850....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/13/world/europe/13switzerland.html

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