I went this summer to the Rhone Glacier, in the middle of the Swiss Alps with my uncle, who is an alpine expert. It is about 1 hour of car away from my home town, Lugano. The road to go up is rough. The Glacier is at around 2200 meters of height and about 20 KM2 ( around 5000 acres), and is named after the big river Rhone, that crosses half Europe. We arrived there in this sunny June day, and could notice how it retired over time.There are pictures and milestones that show how it has been shrinking over time. Since 1850 it became 1.3 Km ( 0.8 miles) smaller. It is impressive to assist at that in person. I felt so bad. It feels like a man without a leg. I stood ther for a while, thinking about how that could happen. Then we went up and went into a tunnel inside the glacier. It is something very exciting, because you feel like you are in the heart of the glacier. As soon as you walk in, you can hear the glacier cracking from the sun. The tunnel is about 100 meters long. Once we came out, we climbed over the glacier, had some good feelings of being in touch with the nature, ate there. It was a strange feeling because we were enjoying the moment, but at the same time, we knew that in 10 years, the glacier will be even smaller, and would probably disappear by the end of the century.
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