Duration: Approximately 3 to 3.5 hours of narrated hiking Distance: 9 km (loop from Susten Pass via Steingletscher area) Elevation Gain: 550 m ascent / 550 m descent Starting Elevation: 2,224 m (Sustenloch/Susten Pass summit) High Point: 2,500 m (glacier viewpoint) Difficulty: T2-T3 (moderate to demanding mountain hiking) Best Season: July to September GPS Start: 46.7310N, 8.4475E (Susten Pass summit) GPS Steingletscher: 46.7450N, 8.4195E
Introduction
Welcome to the Susten Pass, one of the most spectacular mountain passes in Switzerland, and to a hike that brings you face to face with the raw power of glacial geology. Today's walk takes you from the Susten Pass through a landscape shaped by ice, past the retreating Stein Glacier, through terrain that was buried under hundreds of metres of ice within living memory.
The Susten Pass road, opened in 1946, was the first modern Alpine pass road built purely for scenic tourism rather than commercial transit. Its elegant curves, engineered tunnels, and perfectly proportioned granite bridges make it a work of art in itself, and the pass has been a favourite of drivers and cyclists ever since. But today we leave the road behind and explore on foot.
The Susten Pass connects the canton of Bern to the west with the canton of Uri to the east. The pass summit, at 2,224 metres, sits on the watershed between the Aare river system, flowing to the North Sea, and the Reuss river system, which joins the Aare further downstream. The hydrological distinction is academic, as both rivers flow north. But geologically, the pass marks a significant boundary between different rock types and landscape characters.
This hike is a loop from the Susten Pass that visits the Steingletscher, the Stein Glacier, and its dramatic proglacial landscape. The total distance is approximately 9 kilometres with 550 metres of cumulative elevation change. The terrain is rocky and can be rough, with moraine fields and glacial debris requiring careful footing.
Practical notes: The pass road is open only from June to October, depending on snow conditions. Wear sturdy mountain boots; the moraine terrain is loose and uneven. Carry warm layers and rain gear, as weather at this altitude can change quickly. Bring water and food.
Waypoint 1: Susten Pass Summit (2,224 m)
GPS: 46.7310N, 8.4475E
The Susten Pass summit is marked by a large parking area and a hotel restaurant. The views from here are already impressive: to the east, the road descends in sweeping curves toward the Meien Valley and the canton of Uri. To the west, the Gadmental valley stretches toward Innertkirchen and the Bernese Oberland.
Looking south from the pass, you can see the peaks that guard the upper Stein Valley. The Tieralplistock, at 3,383 metres, and the Gwaechthorn, at 3,420 metres, rise above the remnants of the Stein Glacier. These peaks are composed of crystalline gneiss and granite, part of the Aar Massif, the ancient core of the central Alps. The rock here is over 300 million years old, among the oldest in the Alps, formed in the roots of a mountain chain that existed long before the current Alps were born.
The pass itself has been used since ancient times, though the modern road is relatively recent. Medieval travellers used a rougher path slightly to the north, and the pass was known mainly as a local crossing used by herders and traders. It never achieved the strategic importance of the Gotthard or the Simplon, which worked in its favour: the Susten remained a quiet, beautiful backwater until the road brought tourists.
The construction of the Susten Pass road between 1938 and 1946 was a deliberate effort to create a scenic masterpiece. Unlike earlier Alpine roads, which were built for practical transit, the Susten road was designed from the outset with aesthetics in mind. The engineer Hans Leuenberger positioned every curve to maximise the visual impact, and the road's stone bridges, retaining walls, and tunnels were built with a craftsmanship that elevates engineering to art. The road has been described as the most beautiful Alpine road in Switzerland, and driving or cycling it is a celebrated experience in its own right.
From the pass, walk south along the marked trail toward the Steingletscher Hotel and the glacier viewpoint.
Next waypoint: 1.5 km, approximately 25 minutes.
Waypoint 2: The Steingletscher Hotel Area (2,100 m)
GPS: 46.7380N, 8.4370E
The trail descends to the Steingletscher Hotel, a historic mountain inn perched above the glacier valley. This hotel has been hosting travellers since the nineteenth century, and old photographs in its dining room show the glacier as it was decades ago, dramatically larger and closer than it is today.
The Steingletscher, or Stein Glacier, was once one of the most accessible glaciers in Switzerland, reaching almost to the pass road. Victorian tourists could walk from the hotel to the glacier in minutes. Today, the glacier has retreated over a kilometre from its nineteenth-century position, and the terrain between the hotel and the current ice is a raw, boulder-strewn wasteland of moraine and glacial debris.
This retreat is one of the most visible consequences of climate change in the Swiss Alps.
This moraine landscape is a living laboratory of geological processes. The grey, unsorted material, a chaotic mix of clay, sand, gravel, and boulders, is called till, the debris left behind by the glacier as it retreated. The till is unstable and easily eroded, and the streams that flow through it are turbid with suspended sediment, giving them a milky grey colour.
Look for the trimline on the valley walls: the clear boundary between the lichen-covered, vegetated rock above and the bare, freshly exposed rock below. This line marks the maximum height of the glacier during the Little Ice Age, around 1850. The ice has dropped dramatically since then, and the bare rock below the trimline has been exposed for less than 170 years.
Next waypoint: 1.5 km, approximately 30 minutes (rough terrain).
Waypoint 3: The Proglacial Lake (2,050 m)
GPS: 46.7420N, 8.4280E
As you approach the glacier, you will encounter a proglacial lake, a body of water that has formed at the glacier's retreating snout. This lake did not exist a few decades ago. It was created as the glacier retreated and meltwater filled the depression left behind.
Proglacial lakes are forming at the feet of retreating glaciers worldwide, and they are both beautiful and hazardous. The water is cold, typically 1 to 4 degrees Celsius, and turbid with rock flour. The lake's colour ranges from milky turquoise to dark grey, depending on the sediment load and the weather.
The hazard comes from the unstable moraines that often form the lake's banks. These moraines can fail, releasing a sudden flood of water downstream. In Switzerland, this risk is carefully monitored by the Federal Office for the Environment, and moraines at several glacier lakes have been artificially reinforced to prevent catastrophic failure.
The glacier itself is visible at the far end of the lake, or beyond it if the lake has expanded. The ice is dirty grey at its terminus, stained with rock debris, and may show blue-green colours where fresh ice is exposed in crevasses or where blocks have calved into the lake.
Do not approach the glacier's face closely. Ice can calve without warning, and the waves generated by falling ice blocks in the lake can be dangerous. Maintain a safe distance and observe from the marked viewpoints.
The study of glacier retreat is one of the most important areas of climate science. Switzerland, with its long history of systematic glacier measurement dating back to the 1880s, has some of the most complete records of glacial change anywhere in the world. The data from Swiss glaciers, including the Steingletscher, provide crucial evidence for understanding the pace and pattern of global climate change. The Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network, known by its German acronym GLAMOS, coordinates measurements at over 100 glaciers and publishes annual reports that document the relentless trend of ice loss.
Next waypoint: 1.0 km, approximately 25 minutes.
Waypoint 4: The Glacier Viewpoint (2,200 m)
GPS: 46.7435N, 8.4240E
The trail climbs to a viewpoint above the glacier, and from here you can see the Steingletscher in its full context. The glacier flows from the peaks above in a broad river of ice, narrowing as it descends through the valley and ending abruptly at the lake or the bare moraine.
The surface of the glacier is scarred with crevasses, openings created by the stress of the ice moving over uneven bedrock. In the upper reaches, the glacier is white with fresh snow. Lower down, the ice becomes progressively dirtier and darker as rock debris accumulates on the surface. At the terminus, the ice may be more rock than ice, a dark, debris-covered mass that looks nothing like the pristine white glacier of popular imagination.
The retreat of the Steingletscher mirrors the trend seen across the Swiss Alps. Swiss glaciers have lost more than half their total ice volume since the 1930s, with the rate of loss accelerating sharply since the 1980s. The Steingletscher has retreated roughly 1.5 kilometres since its Little Ice Age maximum, and the rate of retreat is increasing.
Stand here and listen. On a warm day, you can hear the glacier: the trickling and rushing of meltwater, the occasional crack as ice shifts, and sometimes a deeper, groaning sound as the immense mass of ice adjusts to the stresses of its own weight and movement. These sounds are the voice of a glacier in decline.
Next waypoint: 1.0 km, approximately 20 minutes.
Waypoint 5: The High Moraine Ridge (2,350 m)
GPS: 46.7440N, 8.4220E
The trail follows a moraine ridge above the glacier, offering aerial views of the ice and the surrounding peaks. This moraine was deposited by the glacier during a period of advance, and its sharp crest marks the boundary between ice-covered and ice-free terrain during that advance.
The rocks in the moraine come from a wide area upstream. As the glacier moves, it picks up and transports rock from the valley floor and walls, carrying it downhill in a frozen conveyor belt. When the ice melts, the rock is deposited, creating the moraine. By examining the rock types in the moraine, geologists can trace where the glacier has been and what it has eroded along the way.
You may find rocks of very different types in the moraine: grey gneiss from the peaks, white quartz from veins in the bedrock, dark amphibolite from deep crustal layers, and occasionally greenish serpentinite, a rock formed from the oceanic crust of the ancient Tethys Sea. This diversity of rock types in a single moraine is a testament to the glacier's power as a geological agent, excavating, transporting, and mixing materials from a vast area.
The view from the moraine ridge is stark and beautiful. The contrast between the raw, lifeless moraine below and the distant green valleys is a powerful visual reminder of how much the landscape changes across small distances in the Alps.
Next waypoint: 1.5 km, approximately 30 minutes.
Waypoint 6: The Alpine Meadow Return (2,250 m)
GPS: 46.7400N, 8.4310E
Leaving the moraine, the trail loops back toward the Susten Pass through alpine meadow and rocky terrain. The contrast with the glacial landscape you have just left is striking. Within a few hundred metres, you pass from bare rock and gravel into meadows dotted with wildflowers.
This transition illustrates the process of ecological succession. The oldest moraines, deposited 150 or more years ago, now support well-developed meadows with deep soil. Younger moraines, exposed more recently, are in earlier stages of colonisation: first lichens, then mosses, then grasses, and eventually a full meadow community. The whole process, from bare rock to meadow, takes roughly 100 to 200 years in this climate.
The meadows here bloom with a rich community of alpine flowers. In July and August, look for the bright blue of the trumpet gentian, the yellow of alpine hawkbit, and the pink of alpine clover. In damper areas near streams, the globe flower, Trollius europaeus, creates drifts of golden blooms.
The animal life in these transitional meadows is also notable. The snow vole, Chionomys nivalis, makes its home among the boulders at the edge of the moraine, where it feeds on alpine plants and builds nests in rock crevices. This small rodent is superbly adapted to life at altitude, with dense fur and a metabolism that allows it to remain active even under deep snow. Its predators include the stoat, or ermine, which turns white in winter for camouflage, and the kestrel, which hovers over the meadows hunting for movement.
The trail here also offers fine views west toward the Gadmental and the peaks above Innertkirchen. The Trift Glacier, once one of the largest in the region, is visible in the distance, its retreat having created a proglacial lake now spanned by a dramatic suspension bridge, one of the longest pedestrian suspension bridges in the Alps.
As you walk, consider the timescale of the landscape changes you have witnessed today. The moraine you crossed was deposited within the last two centuries. The meadows you are walking through have developed over the last several thousand years. The bedrock beneath your feet is over 300 million years old. And the glacier that sculpted it all is retreating at a rate that would have been unimaginable to the geologists who first studied it. This compression of geological time into a single walk is one of the unique gifts of hiking in the high Alps.
Next waypoint: 2.0 km, approximately 35 minutes.
Waypoint 7: Return to Susten Pass (2,224 m)
GPS: 46.7310N, 8.4475E
You have completed the loop and returned to the Susten Pass summit. The hotel restaurant here serves regional specialities from both cantons that the pass connects: Bernese dishes like roesti and Emmental cheese from the west, and dishes from Uri such as Zigerkrapfen, small pastries filled with herb cheese, from the east.
Closing
You have walked through a landscape in transition. The Steingletscher and its surroundings are a dramatic illustration of the changes sweeping through the Alpine environment: glacial retreat, landscape transformation, and the slow reconquest of bare ground by life.
From the Susten Pass, the road descends west to Innertkirchen and Meiringen in the Bernese Oberland, or east to Wassen and the Gotthard route. Both drives are scenic and spectacular, and the Susten Pass road itself is widely considered one of the most beautiful Alpine drives in Switzerland.
If you are heading west, the Aareschlucht, the Aare Gorge near Meiringen, is a stunning natural attraction well worth a stop. If heading east, the town of Andermatt offers access to the Gotthard region and the Oberalppass.
Thank you for hiking with ch.tours. The voice of the glacier, heard from the viewpoint above the ice, is a sound that carries a message beyond its beauty. Listen to it, remember it, and carry it with you. Safe travels.