Guslar Glacier

The Guslarferner is a glacier in the Ötztal Alps of Tirol, lying on the southern side of the Weißkamm ridge. It sits below two peaks, the Fluchtkogel and the Kesselwandspitze, and is split into a larger northern section and a smaller southern section. The Hintergraslspitzen ridge separates it from the Vernagtferner glacier to the northeast. In 1889, cartographer Sebastian Finsterwalder mapped both glaciers, showing their tongues meeting below the present-day Vernagthütte. The larger part of the Guslarferner covered 1.4 square kilometres in 2006, while the smaller section measured just 5.56 hectares in 2010. By 2020 the southern section was expected to have vanished except for small dead-ice areas, and the glacier’s tongue had retreated about 400 metres since 1975. Alpinists usually cross the Guslarferner when travelling from the Vernagthütte to the Brandenburger Haus, ascending the northern lateral moraine before stepping onto the ice just below 3000 metres. The route then leads to the Untere Guslarjoch at 3311 metres, the lowest col in the Kesselwandspitze’s northwest ridge. Less often, climbers use the Obere Guslarjoch at 3361 metres, also called the Winterjöchl, on the Fluchtkogel’s south ridge. The upper reaches of the glacier contain crevasses that are hard to assess, and the onward path to the Brandenburger Haus continues across the Kesselwandferner, which borders the Guslarferner at the Guslarjöcher cols.