Dossen glacier garden
Description
Above Furi (1,953 m), about 30 minutes’ walk from the cable car station, the Dossen glacier garden shows the effects of the last ice age on the landscape. The retreating Gorner Glacier, the second-largest in the Alps, has revealed a variety of glacier mills: rock cauldrons eroded by meltwater from the glacier. As the water flowed through crevasses to the bed of the glacier, it gathered into torrents and formed whirlpools with speeds of up to 200 km/h, which scoured cylindrical cavities in the rock.
The site is also home to the remains of a soapstone quarry. The stone is soft and easily worked, and was popular for making crockery and the ornate ovens that can still be admired in the living rooms of many houses in the upper Valais.
30 minutes’ walk from Furi cable car station
Circular walk via suspension footbridge (90 m above the ground, 100 m long)
Glacier mills
Soapstone quarry
Barbecue sites close by
Soapstone crockery and tools for working soapstone on display at Zermatlantis, the Matterhorn Museum
Soapstone oven on view in the dining room of the Beau Site hotel
Above Furi (1,953 m), about 30 minutes’ walk from the cable car station, the Dossen glacier garden shows the effects of the last ice age on the landscape. The retreating Gorner Glacier, the second-largest in the Alps, has revealed a variety of glacier mills: rock cauldrons eroded by meltwater from the glacier. As the water flowed through crevasses to the bed of the glacier, it gathered into torrents and formed whirlpools with speeds of up to 200 km/h, which scoured cylindrical cavities in the rock.
The site is also home to the remains of a soapstone quarry. The stone is soft and easily worked, and was popular for making crockery and the ornate ovens that can still be admired in the living rooms of many houses in the upper Valais.
30 minutes’ walk from Furi cable car station
Circular walk via suspension footbridge (90 m above the ground, 100 m long)
Glacier mills
Soapstone quarry
Barbecue sites close by
Soapstone crockery and tools for working soapstone on display at Zermatlantis, the Matterhorn Museum
Soapstone oven on view in the dining room of the Beau Site hotel