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Heavier than usual snowfall and high winds have caused chaos on roads and railways in many areas of Austria. Part of a major railway route has been shut down in the west of the county, and some villages and tourist resorts have been cut off. Up to 1.2 metres (4ft) of fresh snow has been recorded in some areas since Thursday. The authorities say the probability of avalanches is extremely high and widespread. The railway line that connects Oetzal, close to Innsbruck in Tyrol, and Bludenz in the far west of the country has been shut and is expected to...

The second Geology Picture of the Week for this week is a very clear picture of the Alps from space. Click for 10x larger. For fun, try to find where the Matterhorn is. Because it's close to the Italian border (borders are shown on the large image) it's not too difficult to do.

The 5,300-year-old "Iceman", may not have died at the site in the Italian Alps where he was found 19 years ago, but was only ceremonially buried there, according to a new theory revealed on Thursday. Oetzi, the 5,300-year-old "Iceman", may not have died at the site in the Italian Alps where he was found 19 years ago, but was only ceremonially buried there, according to a new theory revealed on Thursday. Until now, archaeologists thought Oetzi, whose mummified corpse was discovered in a high mountain pass in the Oetztal Alps in 1991, died at that spot from wounds he had...

Jun 27, 2010 - 17:49 Banking on bunkers in the Swiss Alps Sheltered deep within the Bernese Oberland, two old military bunkers now serve as maximum security vaults for the use of an international clientele. Swiss Fort Knox borrows its name from the Kentucky version, which happens to be the home of the United States Bullion Depository. The focus is on secure data storage in the resort towns of Saanen and Zweisimmen, but it’s safe to say that just about anything could find a well-guarded home in the bedrock. With men in black fatigues, numerous checkpoints and alarm systems plus...

OSLO: Jagged mountains the size of the Alps have been found entombed in Antarctica’s ice, giving new clues about the vast ice sheet that will raise world sea levels if even a fraction of it melts, scientists said. Using radar and gravity sensors, the experts made the first detailed maps of the Gamburtsev subglacial mountains, originally detected by Russian scientists 50 years ago at the heart of the East Antarctic ice sheet. “The surprising thing was that not only is this mountain range the size of the Alps, but it looks quite similar to the (European) Alps, with high peaks...

<p>BRESSANONE, Italy - Serenaded by an oompah band and chiming church bells, Pope Benedict XVI ended a two-week vacation in the Italian Alps on Monday and returned to his summer residence in the hills outside Rome.</p> <p>The 81-year-old pontiff looked well rested as he said goodbye from the main window of the seminary in the northeastern town of Bressanone where he was staying.</p>

Stuck, lost and hobbled in the German Alps, a quick-thinking Colorado Springs woman hooked her bra to a mountainside supply line, which alerted rescuers to her whereabouts just as they were giving up the search. "We're going to have a party for her every June 19, and give her some new bras," Elana Bruinsma, said Monday morning of her sister, Jessica Bruinsma, 24. The white sports bra has become the talk of the Berchtesgaden area of Germany near the Austria border.

A cuneiform clay tablet that has puzzled scholars for over 150 years has been translated for the first time. The tablet is now known to be a contemporary Sumerian observation of an asteroid impact at Köfels, Austria and is published in a new book, 'A Sumerian Observation of the Köfels' Impact Event.' The giant landslide centred at Köfels in Austria is 500m thick and five kilometres in diameter and has long been a mystery since geologists first looked at it in the 19th century. The conclusion drawn by research in the middle 20th century was that it must be...

British scientists have deciphered a mysterious ancient clay tablet and believe they have solved a riddle over a giant asteroid impact more than 5,000 years ago. Geologists have long puzzled over the shape of the land close to the town of Köfels in the Austrian Alps, but were unable to prove it had been caused by an asteroid. Now researchers say their translation of symbols on a star map from an ancient civilisation includes notes on a mile-wide asteroid that later hit Earth - which could have caused tens of thousands of deaths. The circular clay tablet was discovered 150...

Quintessential Alps and Switzerland. Two views. The waterfall is the Staubbach, about 900 feet high.

Nestling in the foothills of the Alps in northern Italy, 30 miles from the ancient city of Turin, lies the valley of Valchiusella. Peppered with medieval villages, the hillside scenery is certainly picturesque. But it is deep underground, buried into the ancient rock, that the region's greatest wonders are concealed. Here, 100ft down and hidden from public view, lies an astonishing secret - one that has drawn comparisons with the fabled city of Atlantis and has been dubbed 'the Eighth Wonder of the World' by the Italian government. For weaving their way underneath the hillside are nine ornate temples, on...

Switzerland has opened the world's longest rail tunnel on land - the 34-kilometre (21-mile) Loetschberg tunnel under the Alps. It will cut the journey time between Germany and Italy by at least a third.

Monks put their lives in focus with a silent film By Kate Connolly in Berlin Last Updated: 1:29am GMT 11/11/2005 The strictest monastic order in Christendom has opened its cloisters to a film director for the first time, allowing him to shoot a three-hour near-silent documentary about its life.What some critics feared would be this year's most boring movie turns out to be a strangely fascinating meditation on the Grande Chartreuse monastery in the French Alps.Into Great Silence depicts its Carthusian monks in the midst of their slow moving daily devotions and duties, from mending shoes to chopping vegetables. advertisement...

Special trains and buses brought in protesters from across Italy Thousands of people have been arriving in the north-eastern Italian city of Vicenza for a march against a planned extension of the US army base there.Organisers say the majority of local people are opposed to US plans. They say Prime Minister Romano Prodi has ignored strong local objections. Thousands of extra police are on duty in Vicenza for what is planned as a peaceful march. There are fears that extremist fringe groups will try to cause violence. Vicenza's mayor fears the march will be infiltrated by left-wing extremists from...

VIENNA, Austria - Most glaciers will disappear from the Alps by 2050, scientists told a conference on climate change Monday, basing their bleak outlook on evidence of slow but steady melting of the region's continental ice sheets. Glaciers in western Austria's Alpine province of Tyrol have been shrinking by about 3 percent a year, meaning their mass decreases annually by roughly 3 feet, said Roland Psenner of the University of Innsbruck's Institute for Ecology. The average density of glaciers in the Alps is 100 feet, "so it seems rather certain that there won't be any more glaciers in the year...

Once again, Bruno the bear has escaped his hunters in Bavaria after repeated sightings in a popular hiking area. Meanwhile, a quick search on Google turns up plenty of Bruno traces. Bear traps from America, bear dogs from Finland, bear hunters from Bavaria -- all of them are still no match for Bruno. The brown bear, officially known as "JJ1" once again made an appearance near the south-eastern town of Bad Tölz on Thursday evening not far from where he received a glancing blow from a car on Wednesday night. Not content merely to reignite the panic that has accompanied...

Rescue operations are continuing across Europe to help thousands of civilians affected by devastating floods which have killed 36 people. In the Swiss capital, Bern, helicopters were used to pluck people from rooftops as rising water and strong currents hampered evacuations. Worst affected is Romania, where seven elderly people were killed on Wednesday bringing deaths there to 25. The rain has eased in some parts, but forecasters warn there is more ahead. Click here for map showing flood-hit countries At least 11 people are reported dead or missing in Switzerland, Austria and Germany, where the authorities are struggling to restore...

Always dreamed of skiing in the Alps? Better do it quick. Rising global temperatures are bringing shorter winters to Europe and increasing difficulties for its famous ski resorts. Many resorts are already suffering and some winter-sport regions are already beginning to plan for a life, aprés ski. ... Oddly, many scientists believe that global warming may, in fact, eventually lead to a radical cooling of Europe. Continuing melting of the polar ice caps -- already well under way -- could severely disrupt the Gulf Stream which brings warm water from the South Atlantic to the coasts of Europe thus ensuring...

Link post: use the link to go to the thread with the pictures in the Chat section, where any discussion and comments should be posted: Geology Pictures of the Week, November 14-20, 2004: Student Fossil Find & Eiger View

Linked article is about this. Here's the interesting excerpt: "Paleontologists are hailing the discovery by a first-year geology student of a new species of amphibian, a salamander-like creature that lived 300 million years ago. -- Adam Striegel picked up a rock the size of a baseball along a road near Pittsburgh International Airport. He decided to show it to one of his lecturers, Charles Jones. Jones spotted some teeth and the outline of a skull. -- "It was immediately clear that this was rare," said Jones." And one of my favorite mountains (not a volcano: click for full-size version):

GREAT ST. BERNARD PASS, Switzerland, Oct. 27 - The only dog right now at the 950-year-old hospice of St. Bernard is a very nice golden retriever named Justy. The issue of those other dogs - the famously huge and heroic ones, who toted brandy barrels in legend, who lived here for centuries and sniffed scores of stranded travelers out of the snow - is not one that the Rev. Frédéric Gaillard is keen to talk about. "Now there are helicopters," Father Gaillard, one of four remaining monks at the St. Bernard's hospice here, said with some irritation. "And we have...

Bodies of WWI soldiers found in glacier ROME - The bodies of three Austrian soldiers killed in World War One have been found frozen and almost perfectly preserved in an Italian Alpine glacier. ADVERTISEMENT Mountain rescue worker Maurizio Vicenzi discovered the mummified bodies on Friday, encased upside down in ice at 11,940 feet altitude on San Matteo mountain near the Swiss and Austrian borders. ``Using binoculars, I saw what looked like a stain on the Forni glacier and went to look,'' Vicenzi, 46, from the northern Italian town of Peio told Reuters on Monday. ``When I got close I discovered...

Link post: Geology Picture of the Week, July 13-19, 2003

Interesting recent article about the Matterhorn: Intense heat puts Matterhorn temporarily off-limits to climbers

<p>July 15 (Bloomberg) -- A heat wave in Europe is melting Switzerland's glaciers and causing chunks of the Swiss Alps to break off, prompting the evacuation of climbers and hikers, Agence France-Presse reported.</p> <p>In southern Switzerland, helicopters ferried about 70 people from the Matterhorn after a rock face on the 3,400-meter (11,155- foot) peak crumbled, AFP said. A portion of a glacier near the Alpine resort of Grindelwald also broke away and fell into the Luetschine river, causing a surge of water downstream. Police warned people several miles away to stay away from the river, AFP cited the Swiss news agency ATS as saying.</p>

Lance just left the other riders in the dust on the Alps like he did against Ulrich in 2001.. same place This mountain stage has a 11.5 percent gradient, not for the weak of heart