This summer, explore part of the Plaine Morte summit: follow a path marked by cairns (structures of stacked stones), add your own stone to the forest of cairns at the end of the route, and immerse yourself in another time. A whole other geological and glaciological time, as well as another time in history, awaits you.
Will the Plaine Morte glacier turn into a lake? In how many years' time? If we’re feeling poetic, we could call it the "Maybe Lake". It would be the first lake in history to be named before it appears...
Where did this mad idea come from? The Plaine Morte glacier is unique in the Alps because of its shape - a plateau - and its surface area, which is around the same as Zurich airport. But it is melting, and fast. Given its current configuration, the high Plaine Morte valley, hidden under millions of cubic metres of ice today, could one day be home to a new mountain lake. Maybe.
