VISP - Valais authorities issued fresh slope and path closures in the Loetschental after repeated rockfalls from peaks above the Birch glacier, including movement on the Kleines Nesthorn. Geologists said warmer rock and thin ice were a bad combination. Hikers were told to stay off marked routes that had been open a week earlier.
Village offices in the valley put the bulletins on doors. Overnight evacuations were not yet ordered. Monitoring teams added instruments.
A language of metres per day
When a glacier starts to be described in metres per day, the next sentences are about people, not about ice. That language would arrive in the following days.