Gefahr aus den Bergen — Terra X

A Terra X documentary on the consequences of thawing permafrost in the Alps. As mountain permafrost — the permanently frozen ground that binds high mountain rock together like a natural cement — melts deeper into the rock, rockfalls and stone avalanches strike densely populated alpine tourist regions ever more frequently.

The film follows a young research team from the University of Bonn on an expedition to the unstable Bliggspitze above the Tyrolean Kaunertal, where a novel measurement method lets them look into the mountain like a CT scan. It revisits the 2002 Kolka glacier disaster in the Caucasus — when a fractured flank of the Kolka massif tore down an entire glacier and roughly 100 million

cubic metres of ice, mud and rock (250× the mass of the Twin Towers) killed 120 people — and uses elaborate computer animations to show how climate-driven permafrost loss is reshaping the Alps.