In mid-May, at about ten thousand feet above sea level, a rocky mountainside in the Swiss Alps gave way and tumbled onto a field of ice called the Birch Glacier. Half a mile below, in the Lötschen Valley, lay Blatten, a picturesque village of centuries-old wooden houses. The following night, Blatten’s mayor, Matthias Bellwald, heard crashing noises from the mountain. He quickly arranged for a helicopter to fly him and a local official who monitored natural hazards up to the site. Although the mountain, the Kleine Nesthorn, was still covered with snow, they could tell that something deeply unnatural was happening. “I saw that, on the mountain, cracks had formed,” the Mayor told me. “At first, it was just one, then several more.”

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