Built in 1967, Germany's last remaining ski lift on a glacier has been demolished in a controlled explosion – because the glacier it's on is disappearing.

Melting ice made the slope so steep that operating the lift was no longer technically feasible. The Schneefernerkopf T-bar lift on Germany's highest mountain Zugspitze and the operator said it had not been used for the past two winter seasons due to the changing conditions brought about by climate change. 

"The slope has become significantly steeper. It used to be a blue run - that is - an easy run. Now it's a black run. The lift can no longer be put into operation for technical reasons," said Laura Schaper, spokesperson for operator Bayerische Zugspitzbahn.

A lift was first installed in the 1930s and modernized repeatedly over the decades. "A piece of history is certainly being lost," he said. "It really does make you feel a bit nostalgic.”

High-tension cables anchoring the existing ski lift were cut with blasting charges in Friday's operation. The lift's pylons, which were built on the ice, then fell and were dragged away through the snow by heavy machinery.

A parallel lift, the Gletschersee T-bar, was already removed in 2012. Without the Schneefernerkopf, there are no longer any ski lifts operating on the glacier.

Laura Schmidt, a geographer and spokesperson for the Schneefernerhaus environmental research station, said Germany's glaciers would soon disappear entirely. 

What's happening to the glaciers

New data on the remaining glaciers in the Bavarian Alps released Thursday found that the glaciers have receded by more than a quarter just between 2023 and 2025, losing around one million cubic meters of ice.

Wilfried Hagg, a geologist at the Munich University of Applied Sciences who worked on the study alongside Mayer, told AFP that climate change is entirely to blame.
Hagg said there's "absolutely no" chance of saving any of Germany's remaining glaciers. 

There are four remaining glaciers in Bavaria: the northern part of the Schneeferne and the Hoellentalferner, which is also located on the Zugspitze. Two others are both located on the Berchtesgarden massif: the Wazmann, at 2,713 meters, and Blaueis at 2,607 meters. Those glaciers "are in very bad shape," Hagg said, with the two on Berchtesgarden "likely to disappear completely very soon, this year or next."

Already, summer melt far outpaces the winter snowfall even at the high elevation of the Zugspitze glaciers, according to Mayer and Hagg.

"Even under the most optimistic climate scenarios, or even if we could stop global warming immediately, they would disappear," Hagg said. "They're absolutely doomed."

According to the EU's Copernicus climate observatory, the last three years have been the warmest ever recorded globally, due to increased greenhouse gas emissions that are causing global warming.

Globally, approximately 41 per cent of total glacier loss occurred during the decade between 2015 and 2024, according to Earth System Science Data, which notes the greatest losses in Alaska, western North America and Central Europe.

The ski slopes of the Zugspitze are among the most popular in Germany, and for decades the ice of the glaciers has helped extend ski season on either side of winter by helping snow settle on the mountain. 

Other lifts elsewhere on the Zugspitze peak will continue operating, but none will remain on the Schneeferner glacier once the demolition work begun on Friday is completed.