Plastic sheet saves Swiss glacier from meltdown

[emad]

Luke Harding in Berlin
Thursday May 12, 2005
The Guardian

It is one of Switzerland's most picturesque ski resorts. But over the past two decades the Gurschen glacier above the village of Andermatt has been melting, forcing locals at the beginning of every ski season to build an artificial snow ramp.

Now, however, the resort's organisers have come up with a novel way of protecting their mountain from global warming - they have wrapped it in clingfilm.

Yesterday workmen were putting the finishing touches to a 2,500sq metre (26,900sq ft) plastic sheet which has been wrapped over a stretch of ice used by skiers to get from the cable-car station to the mountain's ski-routes.

The idea was to stop the ice melting during the summer season, organisers explained. "We have lots of snow. The problem isn't with the snow but with the ice. It melts in the summer," a spokeswoman for the resort, Andermatt Gotthard Sportbahnen AG, said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1481799,00.html

[phantom power]

1. Say, we could cover the Great Lakes in saran-wrap.