Less Info

At the end of August, some six hundred sheep descend from pastures above the Aletsch Glacier in the Valais region of the Swiss Alps. The communal flock has summered on steep alpine slopes, watched over by a lone shepherd, protected from predators and hemmed in by the high peaks above and the glacier ice below. After a retreating glacier cut off the annual migration route, this narrow path was blasted out of a canyon wall in the 1970s to maintain access to the remote alpine pasture. In the medieval Färricha, a stone livestock enclosure, in Belalp, they will be separated into pens by owner and taken back home for the winter.

Filename
STNMTZ_20230827_17442.TIF
Copyright
©2023 George Steinmetz
Image Size
5272x3948 / 119.2MB
www.georgesteinmetz.com
Contained in galleries
At the end of August, some six hundred sheep descend from pastures above the Aletsch Glacier in the Valais region of the Swiss Alps. The communal flock has summered on steep alpine slopes, watched over by a lone shepherd, protected from predators and hemmed in by the high peaks above and the glacier ice below. After a retreating glacier cut off the annual migration route, this narrow path was blasted out of a canyon wall in the 1970s to maintain access to the remote alpine pasture. In the medieval Färricha, a stone livestock enclosure, in Belalp, they will be separated into pens by owner and taken back home for the winter.

All images ©George Steinmetz. Please contact us for usage.