A layer of foil three quarters the size of a football pitch was stretched this week over part of the Gurschen glacier near Andermatt to protect the top of ski runs from global warming.

It will stay in place throughout the summer and, if it works, will avert the need to cart thousands of tonnes of snow to the top of the 2,963m (9,720ft) glacier when the ski season begins.

The tip of the glacier has slipped 20m since the 1990s and is expected to drop at least another 20 metres in the next 15 years.

The permafrost supporting the ski station at the crest of the glacier is also beginning to thaw as summer temperatures in the Alps soar. The mountain is shrinking.

“If the foil experiment works, we will wrap up other glaciers above the 2,600m mark,” Carlo Danioth, head of piste and rescue services in Andermatt, said.

The higher reaches of the Alps could thus end up under a blanket for much of the summer. Foil is much cheaper (at a cost of £44,000) and uses much less energy than transporting snow to the peak and packing it with wooden struts, straw and iron rods, to create a ramp.

According to one Alpine engineer yesterday, that process amounts to little more than “stuffing a finger in the dyke”.

Swiss glaciers have lost about a fifth of their surface area over the past 15 years and Zurich University scholars say that

70 per cent will have melted over the next 30 years.

The foil is double-layered, with polypropyl on the surface and polyester beneath. It reflects the heat and ultraviolet light radiation from the Sun more efficiently than snow and ice. Less energy is absorbed by the snow and it melts more slowly. The foil also guards the snow from dust.

The Swiss scheme, successfully tested on four Austrian mountain slopes, has been sponsored by ski-lift companies who fear global warming will put an end to their business.

The blanket will cover only the ramp where skiers begin their descent of the mountain. “Without this ramp, the ski business would collapse and 105 jobs would be at stake,” Peter Heinzer, a ski supervisor, said.

“It’s absolutely absurd,” Alexander Hauri, of Greenpeace, said. “You cannot combat climate change by applying these oversized sticking plasters.”

The covered area of the Gurschen glacier amounts to

3,000 sq m — about 0.0003 per cent of the total surface of Switzerland’s glaciers. To blanket the whole of the Swiss Alps in this way would cost billions of euros — money that could be spent tackling the causes rather than the symptoms of climate change.

Yet the short-term problem of the ski resorts is pressing. The nearby Trift glacier at the resort of Gadmen shrank as much as 133.7m last year. The melted ice flowed into the lake at the foot of the mountain, which is now close to breaking its banks. Water is being siphoned from the brimming lake to fuel snow cannons producing fresh artificial snow to compensate for the lost ice.

This, too, has drawn the ire of the environmentalists, who insist that a glacier cannot simply be recycled and that what is needed is a change of attitude to the way that the atmosphere is treated.

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