Friday, 23 October 2026
International edition · English
Europe
News, routes, wildlife, plants and mountain and nature guides in Switzerland.
9 articles
When the cold arrives, the Alpine marmot shuts itself in a burrow with its family and spends almost half the year in deep torpor. Its heart almost stops and it lives off the fat it built up in summer.
Little winter snow, heatwaves from May to September and the 0 °C isotherm above 4,000 metres for 76 days: the result is the second-worst year for Swiss glaciers since measurements began.
Measurement campaigns by the Swiss glacier monitoring network document the biggest losses since records began. We explain what the numbers mean and why they matter beyond Switzerland.
In May 2025 a huge flow of ice, rock and mud almost completely destroyed the village of Blatten, in the Lötschental. A preventive evacuation avoided a far greater tragedy. We look at what happened and why it is a warning for the whole of the Alps.
Not all dangerous mountains are dangerous for the same reason. Some kill with avalanches, others with altitude, unpredictable weather or because they look easier than they are. Fifteen summits and their reasons.
When a border follows the watershed across a glacier, melting can move it. That is what has happened around the Matterhorn, where Switzerland and Italy have had to adjust their shared boundary.
With a wingspan of almost three metres and a diet made up mostly of bones, the bearded vulture is one of the most astonishing birds on the planet. After disappearing from much of Europe, it is soaring over its mountains again.
Three countries, a dozen passes and Mont Blanc always on the horizon. The TMB is probably Europe's most famous trek: demanding for its total ascent, but with no technical sections on its classic route.
Its velvety look is not decorative: it is armour against the radiation, cold and dryness of the high mountains. The natural and cultural history of the most famous flower in the Alps.
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