The Tragedy of the Alps’ Disappearing Glaciers for Those That Live, Visit and Ski There

Warming temperatures are wreaking havoc at elevation, upending the Winter Olympics and the tourism industry and imperiling communities

Ari Daniel

– Host, “There’s More to That”

February 12, 2026 7:00 a.m.

Some 2,500 huts dot the landscape across the Alps. For more than two centuries, hikers and climbers have sought out these refuges as they’ve navigated the snowy, high elevations. But the mountain glaciers that have defined this region are melting, putting these huts, the entire culture of alpine hiking, and nearby towns and communities in danger.

Avalanches, rockfalls, mudslides and flooding—brought on by a changing climate—are happening at a time when the Alps are more popular than ever. And the subject of an altered alpine habitat takes on additional importance amid the Winter Olympics in Italy.

In this episode, we speak with Smithsonian magazine’s Megan Gambino, who edited a story on this topic, and environmental scientist Markus Stoffel, who studies how climate change is impacting higher elevations. Both are skiing enthusiasts, so the issue is personal to them as well.

A transcript is below. To subscribe to “There’s More to That,” and to listen to past episodes about the growing concerns around human-made objects in orbit hurtling back toward Earth, the vast fleet of shipwrecks at the bottoms of the Great Lakes and the L.A. wildfires as viewed through the eyes of two photographers, find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Ari Daniel: Megan Gambino has always loved the Winter Olympics.

Megan Gambino: I would say I got interested in the Winter Olympics in the ’90s as a kid with Lillehammer in ’94 and Nagano in ’98.

Daniel: Megan is a senior web editor for Smithsonian magazine, where she oversees travel coverage.

Gambino: At the time, I was figure skating. I was just taking lessons. My aunt also did a stint in the Ice Capades.

Daniel: Really?

Gambino: Yes. And she was a competitive synchronized skating coach in Detroit. So she was a big influence on me in those skating years. So at the time, I was super interested in watching Nancy Kerrigan, Michelle Kwan, Surya Bonaly. I was really amazed when Surya landed her famous backflip on one blade at Nagano.

Daniel: Megan also happens to come from a skiing family.

Gambino: My mom is a ski instructor, so she specializes in adaptive skiing, which is teaching people with physical or cognitive challenges. And she taught me to ski really young.

Daniel: It’s something she does a lot with her own family now, including her 8- and 11-year old-daughters. And they’re all excited to follow the Winter Games in Milan this year.

Gambino: I would say now my favorite events lean more toward skiing, both Alpine skiing and freestyle skiing.

Daniel: But behind that excitement, Megan recognizes the shadow hanging over the world of winter sports.

Gambino: I think climate change will really affect what cities can host the Winter Olympics. It already is. It’s becoming more and more challenging to find cities and areas of the world capable of hosting these events. The hosts are relying more on making snow.

Daniel: And it’s not just the Olympic Games that’ll have to adapt. Megan recently edited a piece for Smithsonian magazine by writer and fellow skier, Anna Fiorentino. She wrote about how melting permafrost in the Alps is threatening all kinds of tourism in that region year round, not to mention the daily lives of residents. Anna’s reporting focused on a network of huts high along the French, Italian and Swiss Alps.

Gambino: There are about 3,000 hiking huts across the Alps, and about half of them are staffed by national alpine clubs to provide food and safety and lodging. Most of the huts date back to the second half of the 19th century. Alpine clubs sprung up in Europe as climbers were making first ascents of major peaks in the Alps in the 1850s and 1860s. This period is often called the golden age of alpinism. And as this mountaineering was happening, adventure tourism was on the rise as well. And so there was this need for a network of huts like these to support hikers who were doing multiday treks who needed stops and support along the way.

Daniel: How would you explain the issues that these hiking huts are facing?

Gambino: As the region warms from climate change, the ground underneath the huts is becoming more unstable. Permafrost is frozen ground that stays frozen, generally speaking, in high alpine areas. And this permafrost is like a glue that holds rock formations together above elevations of 7,500 feet, but it’s thawing and it’s turning from ice to mud. And as it’s doing that, the Alps are experiencing more rockfalls and avalanches.

Daniel: Flooding.

Gambino: Yes, flooding. The rocks, avalanches are slamming into the huts. They’re covering trails that lead to the huts, and the foundations of the huts are crumbling.

Daniel: Ironically, the warming weather causing this geological instability is also what’s drawing more people to the region.

Gambino: There have been record number of tourists in the Dolomites like last summer; but with more tourists, there’s more accidents. Search-and-rescue operations are up, too. And the future of guided mountain tours is at risk, really, because mountain guides struggle to afford the extra insurance they need to lead people on these tours in riskier terrain. So the cost of trips is going up and the guides are considering moving outside the Alps to other places that are safer. But yes, generally speaking, tourists have to expect for more flexibility and more detours.

Daniel: I’m wondering, when you were in contact with Anna, who was writing the piece, what was she telling you about what she was seeing while she was there and sending dispatches from the Alps?

Gambino: She had some detours in her two weeks. She was delayed on one day and rerouted. And then another time, she was hiking and she started hearing crackling and rocks falling behind her.

Daniel: Oh my goodness.

Gambino: And luckily it was just a few rocks tumbling, but it was a scare for her and just what hikers have come to expect.

Daniel: Sounds pretty unpredictable and dangerous.

Gambino: It is. One of the hut guardians had told her, “There’s always a risk in hiking in high alpine areas. This is adventure tourism, but those risks are going up.”

Daniel: From Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions, this is “There’s More To That,” the show that climbs mountain peaks to look upon the shifting landscapes below. I’m Ari Daniel. In this episode, we take a cue from the Winter Olympics and head to the Alps to learn more about what’s happening to those mountains and why it matters. Stay tuned.

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Markus Stoffel: I was born and raised in the Alps, so I grew up 30 kilometers (about 19 miles) north of the Matterhorn, so the emblematic Toblerone mountain.

Daniel: This is Markus Stoffel. He’s an environmental scientist at the University of Geneva. His research focuses on how the climate is changing in high mountain environments and its impact on the stability of the mountains themselves. Basically, he studies the places he loves—their strengths and their vulnerabilities.

Stoffel: The Alps are gigantic summits, black and white, so rock and ice. And under these high summits, we have the lush green mountain meadows, the forests. And then, in the valley floors, nowadays, we have the rivers, we have roads, we have tourist infrastructure, and we have, in winter, all the winter tourism with skiing, cross-country skiing. But in summer, we also have the hikers that are in the mountain valleys. If you go a bit off the beaten track, you can see bearded vultures in the sky. We can see ibex up on the steepest cliffs of the mountains. So you have both contrasts—the main tourist areas with all the cable cars, but then you also have the remote places where you can hike and you’re basically on your own.

Daniel: So you grew up with the Alps basically as your backyard?

Stoffel: Yeah, the Alps were basically my backyard when I was a kid. During winter, I would be on the slopes skiing on Wednesday afternoons, Saturday afternoons and on Sundays. And during the summer with my parents, we would go up to a high elevation site where my grandparents had a holiday house, and I would stay there for eight weeks in summer. We had a mountain farmer nearby producing cheese every morning over a wood fire pit. And we basically stayed with that farmer. And when we returned at lunch, we were smelling like a chimney. We were helping him to produce the cheese. We could taste the fresh cheese. So it was amazing.

Daniel: But he would soon come to learn that larger forces loomed over the Alps, threatening this idyllic existence.

Stoffel: I was in the last year at high school. There was a major flood in my hometown. Half a billion in damage. And this also then defined my future trajectory. I was not prepared to look into natural hazards, but that episode was really dramatic. So not just for the damage, not just for the people that were killed—that was obviously the biggest tragedy—but as a teen, all of a sudden, there were no restaurants open anymore. There was nowhere to meet with friends. And this, then, made my decision much easier. I wasn’t prepared to do geography, but that day after the disaster, I decided to study geography and to look into what climate is doing to natural hazards.

Daniel: How is a warming climate, a changing climate, altering the landscape of the Alps?

Stoffel: I would say the most obvious change is the glacier retreat. In the last 25 years, glaciers in the European Alps have lost 40 percent of their mass.

Daniel: Wow.

Stoffel: So almost half of what was there in the year 2000 is now gone. Another huge change that can be observed more is the thawing of permafrost. Permafrost is the ice in the underground. It’s hidden. Normally, you do not see that ice, but this ice can be in bedrock or it can be on unconsolidated debris on talus slopes. And what happens here is when warming hits the ground, this ice, which acts like concrete, becomes warmer and the material that was kept on steep slopes loses its equilibrium and will either gradually or instantaneously be released, follow gravity and fall down slopes and into the valley floors.

Instabilities can also occur whenever glaciers are retreating because you have to imagine glaciers oftentimes occupy valleys. And as they retreat, they liberate valley floors. And for as long as the glacier was in place, this ice exerted pressure on either side. So it kept the material on the slopes, but also weakened the slopes through the pressure it exerted. And as the glacier disappears, these slopes can become unstable, and they can also create major mass movements. And we have had several of these events. Oftentimes, we see small rockfalls, so just a few cubic meters of rock or of debris falling down. That’s not a major issue. It can be a problem if you’re on a hiking trail in summer or if you’re mountaineering, but we’ve also had much bigger events, lately.

Daniel: Like the one that made international news last spring.

Stoffel: Some of you may have heard of the Blatten Landslide in May.

Daniel: The footage of the Blatten Landslide is online and it’s terrifying to watch. It’s this gushing, cascading torrent of rocks and dirt and ice bombing down an otherwise lush green mountainside and burying nearly the entire village below in a matter of minutes.

Stoffel: These rock-ice avalanches, they have speeds of up to 300 kilometers an hour (about 185 miles per hour). So basically once the rock-ice avalanche, as we call it, starts, there’s nothing you can do. In the case of Blatten of that landslide, what happened, luckily, is that the authorities, a few weeks before the disaster occurred, they realized that something was completely wrong up on that mountain. They already had equipment installed for monitoring. They intensified the monitoring, and in the weeks preceding the disaster, they decided to evacuate the village. So the event did not occur out of the blue.

I have been studying rock-ice avalanches across the world, especially also in High Mountain Asia, but still when it hits your place, it’s always different. And thanks to the evacuation of the village, I mean, the houses were destroyed—there’s not much you can do about the houses—but none of the 300 inhabitants was killed. There was one farmer who was at the site, looking after his animals who unfortunately was killed by the event, but all the people living in the village of Blatten were saved in time.

Daniel: You mentioned you had friends who were from that village. What did they tell you? I mean, how did they react or respond to such a catastrophe?

Stoffel: It’s a small mountain community and the people from that valley, most of their families, they have been in the valley for centuries. For them, it’s a disaster. Of course, they’re extremely grateful that the authorities were taking them out of the village. At the same time, they had to leave their houses. They had like 30 minutes between the moment when they were alerted and by the time they had to be out of the village. So basically…

Daniel: My goodness.

Stoffel: …no time to take whatever you have at home. So it’s not just the houses they’ve lost. It’s not just their hometown, which doesn’t exist anymore; also most of their personal belongings are now covered with dozens of meters of debris. They also lost everything that reminded them of their ancestors, of their families, of their parents or grandparents, and not knowing whether they could ever go back to the village. Building space in the valley is very limited. Will there be tourism again in the future? Because, except for a few farmers, there’s not much to be done, so you rely on tourism. Tourists want to come back, but the hotels are also destroyed. So it’s a very difficult situation for them.

Daniel: What sort of monitoring systems are in place for rock slides and avalanches?

Stoffel: So, basically, there is satellite-based monitoring, and Switzerland is monitoring these movements systematically across the country. And authorities in all different parts of Switzerland, they have access to the data. They know where things can happen. They know which slopes are moving. They know how fast the slopes are moving, based on satellite information. But then there’s also ground truthing.

Daniel: That’s basically boots-on-the-ground kind of science, double checking the satellite data with one’s own eyes and ears.

Stoffel: They also install cameras to observe changes. They install GPS devices, so they can really detect changes of a few millimeters and see whether these movements are accelerating or whether they stay the same. Whenever clefts are opening, they can also put what we refer to as extensometers so they can check the opening of these clefts. And nowadays with mobile phone connection in mountains, it’s very easy. So you have 24/7 access to this data. In the case of smaller events, so if you have just rockfalls, you can also put countermeasures in place. You can put dams or fences to stop these mass movements.

But in the case of rock slides or these rock-ice avalanches, you have millions and millions of cubic meters. There’s no way to stop them. You can basically monitor them. You can try to make sure that no new constructions, no new buildings are put there. So you can make sure not to increase future risks, but there’s basically nothing you can do to stop these processes. If you go to winter hazards, snow avalanches, similar techniques can be used. So you can measure snow height. You have observers who do snow profiles who try to detect weak layers in the snow. In Switzerland, we have blasting. They also do it in Italy. So whenever we have critical situations, they would take TNT, go to specific localities with a helicopter, release the TNT and trigger avalanches artificially. So to make sure that there’s not too much snow accumulating so you can get a number of smaller avalanches down the slopes rather than waiting for a big avalanche to trigger naturally and then potentially cause huge damage.

Daniel: As if the rock landslides and snow avalanches weren’t enough, droughts are now a problem in the Alps as well.

Stoffel: This winter, December was extremely dry in the Alps, basically no precipitation. So in some of the regions not too far away from where the Winter Olympics will take place in Engadin, that’s in the Swiss Alps, the lakes were frozen because temperatures dropped quite drastically up there—minus 25 degrees Celsius (minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit) sometimes. And there, the lakes were freezing, so they have what they call black ice, but no snow.

Daniel: Which is definitely unusual.

Stoffel: The Alps tend to get most of the precipitation in winter. Summer is drier. So far, this lack of precipitation in summer was compensated by the melting water from snow and from glaciers, but as glaciers are getting smaller and smaller, and as snow is also melting earlier, we may not have that water in the rivers anymore. So you have summits, which still have glaciers, but down in the valleys, you may be facing drought conditions in the Alps. And I should maybe say on a global average, climate change so far has led to warming of roughly 1.5 degrees Celsius. In the European Alps, for Switzerland, for instance, we are already at 2.8 degrees warming.

Daniel: Wow.

Stoffel: So high-elevation sites and polar regions are warming much faster than the global average.

Daniel: I’m wondering, how do you think sports tourism to the Alps will have to shift as the landscape and the terrain continues to change?

Stoffel: We’ll have to adapt to climate change because several of the tourist stations, especially those who are located at low elevations, they will not have the snow in the future to maintain their ski resorts, and artificial snow can only be produced when temperatures are close or below zero degrees Celsius. And in a warming climate, the windows that you have for artificial snow production is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. In summer, as a result of instabilities on slopes, different trails have been closed because municipalities cannot guarantee for the safety of tourists anymore.

Daniel: So the Winter Olympics, they’re taking place right now in the southern Alps. And I’m wondering if you can just reflect on how all these changes to the landscape that you’ve been describing might be affecting them.

Stoffel: I think the key challenge for the Winter Olympics taking place now is the snow. They prepare enough snow, oftentimes artificial snow, ahead of the events to be prepared.

Daniel: But the use of artificial snow is, at best, controversial.

Stoffel: I don’t like artificial snow. So whenever you ski on a slope, you can tell the difference immediately. It’s not the same snow. That said, over the past few years, I would have been many days at home rather than on the slopes had there not been artificial snow. So with climate warming, running a resort without artificial snow is becoming increasingly difficult.

Daniel: There’s also the question of whether artificial snow is the best use of limited water resources.

Stoffel: In a mountain environment where water scarcity is becoming more of an issue, producing snow comes with a series of ethical questions. What is the priority? Do we use the water for the local population? Do we use the water for hydropower, electricity production? Do we use the water for agriculture? Or do we use the water in winter to produce artificial snow? So for now, most stations are still in a situation where they do not need to ask that question too much, but that will soon change. Also, whenever you produce artificial snow or whenever you prepare slopes for skiers, you’re compacting the snow. And the snow will stay longer along these slopes and this has clear consequences, then, also on the flora, so on the vegetation, and on the biodiversity. Everything comes with a cost.

Daniel: Might the future of the Winter Olympics themselves be at risk where we can’t have certain activities like downhill skiing or other things that really rely on cold weather?

Stoffel: There will still be resorts at higher elevation which will have enough snow for the Winter Olympics, even as we go into the second half of the 21st century. I think what the International Olympic Committee should rather consider is whether it makes sense to go to new places every time, or whether they should rely on stations where the infrastructure already is in place, stations that are located at high elevations and where the environmental footprint of the games would also be smaller. At higher elevations, you need to produce less artificial snow. There’s more snow there naturally. You need to put less chemicals, salt, water, whatever to get the icy conditions on the slopes. I think that would be something that, if I would be asked by the International Olympic Committee what to do, that would be my recommendation. But to be completely honest with you, when it comes to skiing, I’m a fan, like many others, and I see the athletes and I don’t see climate change so much, at least not during the race. Maybe before, maybe after.

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Daniel: Megan Gambino, the Smithsonian magazine editor and winter sports enthusiast, is also familiar with setting aside climate anxieties to just enjoy the Winter Games. She plans to watch with her kids, and they’re geared up.

Gambino: I like to watch it all. I’m a very competitive person. I was always involved in sports, so I like to learn about new sports too. And so even if it’s curling, I like to brush up on the rules.

Daniel: Even if it’s curling.

Gambino: Yeah.

Daniel: But as a parent, she’s well aware that her children will face a rapidly changing future and they might not have forever to enjoy the sport she’s taught them to love. They don’t have to travel to the Alps to feel the effects of climate change.

Gambino: I would say for me, locally here in Connecticut, it’s been that local mountains have invested more in snowmaking equipment to extend their ski seasons, and it’s working. I mean, this year we started earlier than ever in December. And it was all on snow made during a stretch of cold nights. So I think with less snowfall, that’s what a lot of mountains are doing. I think out west right now, in the Rockies, resorts are experiencing a snow drought. There’s warm temperatures and very little snowfall. We have a trip planned for Steamboat in Colorado in March, and I think more than ever we have our fingers crossed.

Daniel: And her kids are keyed into these changes.

Gambino: I think they’re very aware of the snowmaking, like we’re talking about and the feeling those differences under their skis and hoping for natural snow. And it will be more and more a conversation for them, obviously. We started them at two. We want them to love the sport and I think we will feel a challenge of finding the best places to do it heading into the future. And that does make me sad for something that brings us so much joy.

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Daniel: To read Anna Fiorentino’s piece about the impact of melting permafrost and glaciers on the hut system of the Alps, visit smithsonianmag.com. We’ll put a link in our show notes.

On the next episode of “There’s More to That,” we’ll honor the 250th birthday of the United States by exploring a new interactive map that Smithsonian magazine has created, containing sites worth celebrating around the country.

If you like this show, please consider leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. It helps new listeners find the show, and we’d appreciate it.

“There’s More to That” is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX productions.

From the magazine, our team is me, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Ali Budner, Cleo Levin, Genevieve Sponsler, Sandra Lopez-Monsalve and Edwin Ochoa. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzalez.

Our episode artwork is by Emily Lankiewicz. Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. I’m Ari Daniel. Thanks for listening.

You’re a pretty good skier, I imagine.

Stoffel: Well, I never made it to the world championships. I was never doing competitive skiing, but I feel pretty much okay on each and every slope. So there are not many limits when it comes to skiing, yes. But I’m not a professional, certainly not.

Daniel: I like how you’re thinking that, well, you’re not as good as a world champion, but that must mean you’re still probably pretty great.

Stoffel: I’m doing pretty much okay, but if now some of my colleagues will listen to the podcast, they will laugh out loud because they’re certainly better than I am. So I’m certainly, for Swiss standards, I’m probably an average or slightly above-average skier. For international standards, I’m probably a very good skier. It’s a matter of perspective.