What happened on July 3, 2022
At 13:43 local time on a Sunday afternoon in July, a serac — a block of glacial ice — detached from the upper portion of the Marmolada glacier at approximately 3,200 meters altitude on the north face. The mass was later calculated at 70,400 cubic meters of ice and rock. It traveled 2.3 kilometers down the normal ascent route toward Punta Penia, the highest summit in the Dolomites at 3,343 meters.
Eleven people died. Eight were injured. The victims were mountaineers on a route considered non-technical by Dolomite standards — a glacier traverse that hundreds of people completed every summer weekend.
The collapse happened during a heatwave. Temperatures at 3,000 meters in the days before the event exceeded 10 degrees Celsius — approximately 12 degrees above the seasonal average. The glacier surface had no insulating snow cover. The conditions were anomalous but not unprecedented, and that is the point. The mechanisms that produced this event are not going away. They are accelerating.
The 2025 mechanism analysis
In 2025, a peer-reviewed study published in Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (NHESS) provided the most detailed causal analysis of the collapse to date. The paper identified four interacting mechanisms:
1. Permafrost degradation. The bedrock beneath the glacier contains permafrost — permanently frozen ground that anchors the ice mass to the rock. Rising temperatures have been degrading this permafrost for decades, weakening the bond between glacier and mountain. The glacier is not merely melting from the surface. It is detaching from below.
2. Elevated ice temperatures. Borehole measurements showed that the ice itself had warmed to near the pressure-melting point throughout its thickness — not just at the surface. Warm ice deforms more easily under its own weight and loses structural integrity. The serac that collapsed was not frozen solid. It was warm, weak, and heavy.
3. Hydrostatic pressure. Meltwater percolating through the glacier accumulated in internal channels and at the ice-bedrock interface. This water exerted outward pressure on the ice mass from within, creating stress concentrations that the weakened ice could not sustain.
4. Hydraulic jacking. Water at the base of the glacier forced itself into cracks and gaps between ice and rock, physically lifting and separating the ice from its bed. This mechanism — well documented in glaciology but rarely observed at such lethal scale — was the proximate trigger. The water did not merely lubricate the base. It actively pried the ice loose.
The study's conclusion is unambiguous: the collapse was not a random event. It was the predictable consequence of sustained warming acting on a glacier that had already lost most of its mass and structural integrity. The four mechanisms operate simultaneously and reinforce each other. As the glacier thins, it becomes more vulnerable to all four. The feedback loop has no off switch.
Source: Bozzini et al., "The 3 July 2022 catastrophic collapse on Marmolada glacier," NHESS, 2025.
The numbers: 1888 to now
The Marmolada glacier has been measured continuously since the late 19th century, making it one of the best-documented glacial retreats in the Alps. The trajectory is not subtle.
- Area loss since 1888: more than 80 percent. What was once a broad ice field covering much of the north face is now a fragmented remnant.
- Volume loss since 1888: more than 94 percent. The glacier has lost nearly all of its ice mass in 136 years.
- Maximum ice thickness in 2024: 34 meters. For context, the glacier was hundreds of meters thick in the Little Ice Age maximum. Thirty-four meters is not a glacier in any meaningful long-term sense. It is an ice patch on a schedule.
- Projected disappearance: by 2040 at current melt rates. This is not a speculative model. It is a linear extrapolation of measured data — and the melt rate is accelerating, not linear, meaning 2040 may be optimistic.
- Glaciers remaining in the Dolomites: twelve. The Dolomites once held dozens. Most of what remains are small ice bodies below the elevation threshold where glaciers can sustain themselves under current climate conditions.
The Marmolada glacier sits at approximately 2,700 to 3,300 meters — low by Alpine glacier standards. The equilibrium line altitude (the elevation above which a glacier gains more snow than it loses) has risen above the glacier's upper reaches. There is no altitude on Marmolada where the glacier can survive indefinitely under current conditions. It is not retreating to a new equilibrium. It is dying.
The Ice City: a war inside a glacier
The glacier's retreat has a second narrative embedded in it, one that connects the Marmolada collapse to the defining historical layer of the entire Dolomites.
During World War I, the Marmolada glacier was the front line. The Italian-Austro-Hungarian alpine war — the Guerra Bianca, the White War — ran directly through the Dolomites from 1915 to 1918, with combat positions reaching above 3,000 meters. On Marmolada, the Austrian army solved the problem of housing troops at extreme altitude by going inside the glacier itself.
Austrian military engineers carved a system of tunnels, barracks, kitchens, a chapel, and storage rooms into the ice at approximately 3,000 meters. The complex housed over 200 soldiers. It was heated by stoves, lit by oil lamps, and connected by corridors wide enough for supply carts. The soldiers called it the Eisstadt — the Ice City. It was, at the time, one of the most extraordinary feats of military engineering in the war.
The Ice City was never designed to last. It was an expedient solution carved from a medium that moves. Glacial flow, even then, was slowly deforming and destroying the tunnels. After the war, the glacier reclaimed the infrastructure.
Now the glacier is giving it back.
As the Marmolada ice thins and retreats, remnants of the Ice City have been emerging: structural timbers, metal artifacts, personal effects of soldiers who lived and died inside the glacier more than a century ago. The same melt that killed 11 people in 2022 is conducting an involuntary archaeological excavation of a war that ended in 1918.
The state of the Ice City remains after the 2022 collapse is not fully documented in public literature. The collapse path crossed the area where remains had been emerging. Some of what the glacier was returning may have been destroyed in the same event that demonstrated why the glacier cannot hold together.
Sources: Smithsonian Magazine, "The Most Treacherous Battle of World War I Took Place in the Italian Mountains"; Schaumann, Walther, Schauplätze des Gebirgskrieges 1915--1918 (Athesia).
Access in 2026: what is open, what it costs
The Marmolada is not closed. The cable car operates. Guided excursions run. The glacier can be visited — and there are defensible reasons to visit it.
Cable car: Malga Ciapela to Punta Rocca (3,265 m). The Funivie Marmolada cable car operates in both summer (typically late June through mid-September) and winter (ski season). Three stages from the valley floor at Malga Ciapela (1,450 m) to Punta Rocca, with intermediate stops at Banc (2,350 m) and Serauta (2,950 m). The Serauta station houses the Museo della Grande Guerra (WWI museum), which displays artifacts recovered from the glacier and the surrounding war positions. Current pricing and schedules: funiviemarmolada.com.
West Ridge via ferrata to Punta Penia (3,343 m). The highest point in the Dolomites is reached via a via ferrata from Punta Rocca. This is a serious alpine route — rated K3/K4 (difficult to very difficult), requiring via ferrata equipment, helmet, harness, and ideally a guide. The route traverses exposed rock with fixed cables above the glacier remnant. Open for guided excursions from approximately June through October, weather permitting. Multiple guide services operate from Canazei and Malga Ciapela.
The normal glacier route — the route on which the 2022 collapse occurred — has been subject to access restrictions and closures since the event. Conditions are assessed annually. As of 2026, guided glacier crossings are available but dependent on current glacial conditions and risk assessments that change within the season. Check locally before committing to a glacier traverse.
Getting there. Malga Ciapela is in the Belluno province of Veneto, on the north side of the Marmolada massif. It is approximately 2 hours by car from Bolzano, 2.5 hours from Venice Marco Polo airport, and 30 minutes from the Passo Fedaia road. Canazei in Val di Fassa (Trentino) is the nearest major town on the south side, connected by the Fedaia pass road (open summer only).
The honest framing
The Marmolada glacier is a reasonable destination for a trekker or mountaineer who wants to see one of Europe's last low-altitude glaciers before it is gone. The cable car provides access to 3,265 meters with no technical skill required. The WWI museum at Serauta is a legitimate cultural attraction. The view from Punta Rocca — across the remaining ice to the pale Dolomite walls — is among the most visually striking in the range.
It is also a landscape in terminal collapse. The glacier that Austrian soldiers carved a city inside has lost 94 percent of its volume. The serac collapse that killed 11 people was not an aberration; it was a mechanism that the peer-reviewed science says will recur as conditions worsen. The ice that remains has a measured expiration date, and that date is within the planning horizon of someone booking a trip for next summer.
Both of these things are true at the same time.
A guide that promotes the Marmolada cable car as a scenic day trip without mentioning the 2022 deaths, the ongoing glacial collapse, or the scientific consensus on the glacier's disappearance is not being honest with its reader. Equally, a guide that treats Marmolada as a no-go zone is overstating the current risk — the cable car operates, the via ferrata is maintained, guided services run, and the mountain receives thousands of visitors every summer.
The useful framing is neither promotional nor catastrophist. It is geological. The glacier is a physical system with measurable parameters — thickness, area, volume, temperature, permafrost integrity — and every one of those parameters is moving in the same direction. Visiting the Marmolada in 2026 is visiting a system in its final phase. That is not a reason to stay away. It may be a reason to go.
What the Marmolada tells you about the Dolomites
The Marmolada collapse is not an isolated event. It is a specific, lethal instance of a process occurring across the entire range.
Twelve glaciers remain in the Dolomites. All of them sit below the elevation where glaciers can sustain themselves under current climate conditions. All of them are losing mass. The Marmolada is the largest and the most studied, which is why it produces the most dramatic data — but the trajectory applies to every ice body in the range.
The broader Dolomite landscape is not melting. The rock — 250-million-year-old carbonate reef limestone — is geologically stable on any human timescale. The towers, walls, and buttresses that define the visual character of the range are not going anywhere. The enrosadira will still turn the peaks pink at sunset in 2040 and in 2140.
What is changing is the frozen water that sits on and between the rock. Glaciers, permafrost, and seasonal snowpack are all declining. This affects trail conditions (rockfall from newly exposed faces), rifugio water supplies (glacier-fed streams diminishing), and route viability (glacier crossings becoming impossible or requiring rerouting). The Dolomites are not disappearing. They are defrosting. The distinction matters.
For the trekker planning a Dolomites trip in 2026 or 2027, the practical implication is straightforward: the glaciers are a time-limited feature of this landscape. They will not be here in 15 years. The rock will outlast every human institution that has ever claimed it — the Raetians, the Romans, the Austrians, the Italians, the UNESCO committee, the Instagram algorithm. The ice will not.
If seeing a glacier in the Dolomites matters to you, the window is open and narrowing. The cable car runs. The via ferrata is bolted. The mountain is not going anywhere. The ice is.
Sources
- Bozzini et al., "The 3 July 2022 catastrophic collapse on Marmolada glacier," Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 2025
- Wikipedia, "2022 Marmolada serac collapse"
- Funivie Marmolada — opening times and prices
- Smithsonian Magazine, "The Most Treacherous Battle of World War I Took Place in the Italian Mountains"
- UNESCO WHC, "The Dolomites" — inscription file 1237
- Schaumann, Walther. Schauplätze des Gebirgskrieges 1915--1918 (Athesia). Canonical German-language reference for Marmolada Ice City.
- Thompson, Mark. The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915--1918 (Faber, 2008).
- Lagazuoi Open-Air Museum
- Dolomiti Belluno DMO, "Overtourism in the Dolomites," March 2026
- Autonomy Experience Südtirol — EURAC Research policy briefs
- Visit Trentino, "How Were the Dolomites Formed?"
- Cortina Delicious, "WW1 Open-Air Museums in the Dolomites"
- Bosellini, Alfonso. Geology of the Dolomites (IUGS Episodes, 1984).
- Guide Dolomiti — via ferrata grades