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The glaciers of the Alps are melting, and these Swiss cartographers have work to do.

Every few years, Switzerland’s national mapping agency sends one of its planes to survey every centimeter of the Swiss Alps; the pilot turns back and forth to take pictures of the changes in the landscape. For the most part, changes to the country’s official map are minor and largely automatic: a house appears here, a funicular there. But recently, the need for overhaul has intensified for a rare group of about three dozen cartographers of the agency.

“The glaciers are melting and I have more work to do,” said Adrian Dähler, who is part of this special group.

Dähler is one of only three cartographers at the agency – the Federal Office of Topography, or Swisstopo – allowed to deal with the Swiss Alps, the most important part of the country’s map. Known in the office circle as “felsiers”, a Swiss-German nickname loosely translated as “people who draw rocks,” Dähler, along with Jürg Gilgen and Markus Heger, in shaded relief, to make a mountain (and any of its glaciers) appear three-dimensional. . Their skills and ingenuity also help them capture the consequences of thawing permafrost, such as landslides, shifting rifts and new lakes.

“It’s a bit like being a god,” Gilgen said. “You are creating a world.”

For now this work is still done by hand. “It’s pretty easy to update infrastructure, names or borders, but it’s harder to make climate change visible on maps,” said Andreas Huggler, head of the cartography department. “It changes the physical shape of our world on a larger scale.”

Contributing to mountains is considered an honor at Swissstopo. Located in Wabern, a suburb of Bern, the office’s entrance features a huge map of the Alps: Inside, a map of Blüemlisalp mountain doubles as conference room wallpaper; The Matterhorn adorns the gift shop’s silk ties; Dufourspitz wraps metal water bottles.

Still, the methods are old-fashioned and time-consuming. Gilgen, Dähler and Heger are the only mappers to use a digital tablet and stylus. They work directly on the map while colleagues update spreadsheets. “You draw little lines for weeks and months,” Dähler explained. “At least one person tried and gave up. You have to have a certain character.” (He advised patience, restraint, and genuine mountain love.)

The first step to regulating the Alps is to remove foreign glaciers. Weather data collected by Swissstopo aircraft serves as a guide. It shows the latest terrain overview in translucent colors, superimposed on the old map. The mapper then removes the old shadows with a digital eraser. The remaining ancient glacier lines will stand out like cross-border scribbles in a coloring book; these are best lassoed with a cursor. With a tap of the delete key, the last bit of ice disappears, like a typo or an unpleasant email.

Filling vacancies requires more expertise. Swiss relief shading is internationally renowned for both its accuracy and natural approach. Gilgen and two colleagues apprenticed at Swissstopo for four years before applying to draw the classic mountain landscape. For the first year, they only worked lines and ovals every morning. “You need to know how to control your hand and even your breathing,” Gilgen said.

One way to draw a mountain is to divide it into manageable shapes, all kinds of triangles and rhombuses, and then fill in the details later. More experienced cartographers ditch this intermediate outline: Gilgen, for example, draws one mountain at a time and leaves a final outline as they move on the page. The result is the same – a mountain chain of thousands of small crosses. These short parallel lines bend in the same direction as the actual slope, preparing hikers for the ultimate steep climbs or plateaus. Up close, the texture of the lines also mimics the type of rock: eroded limestone (angular, rough), terrain under a glacier (polished, stable), steep granite (“trembling” or zitterig in German).

“We have a lot of rules,” Gilgen said, such as the number of lines that can appear in any two square millimeters on the map. (Six on average, seven in direct sun, eight in the shade.) “But we have some freedom, too,” he added.

To turn a complex subject into a legible, portable format, cartographers rely on their own instincts and imagination. “Some distortion is normal,” he explained. They take proportional liberties and exaggerate important features at the expense of distractions. (A single rock standing for three; an extra-large crevasse as a warning of danger.) For Gilgen, a successful map is closer and more meaningful to a cartoon than a portrait.

The drawing styles in the Alps seem indistinguishable to the average chartplotter. But some experts at Swisstopo say they can spot significant differences with the help of a magnifying glass. “It’s like handwriting,” Dähler said. “Pretty regular” lines point to deskmate Heger. By contrast, he said Gilgen has a naturally “live” touch. As for himself, Dähler guessed his style was a mix of the two.

Gilgen, Dähler and Heger are likely to be the last people to leave a distinct mark on these mountains. Swissstopo plans to phase out this hand-drawn app, at least in part to save costs. If the technology meets the agency’s high standards, the business could become fully automated in about a decade. The scree of the map is already produced by a software program that can deliver small stones onto a hillside exponentially faster than mappers. (About three minutes versus three days.)

Meanwhile, the team is busy with extra assignments created by the melting glaciers, which put their skills to better use than routine edits. That this professional opportunity is a byproduct of extraordinary environmental degradation is not lost on them. While Gilgen enjoys the work, he also worries about the consequences. She feels particularly anxious when she’s occasionally wiping the ice. “Sometimes it’s scary when you see these kinds of changes,” he said. “I get the eerie feeling that there’s something we can’t control.”

Heger and Dähler are more distant; as a rule, they refrain from making judgments about the various updates coming to their desks. “Our personal opinions don’t play a role,” Heger said. Dähler also stays “quite neutral in drawing rocks”. Still, they see their work as an important act of documentation. As Heger observes, “memories of the past can be erased”. “National maps and landscape photos capture a moment in time.”

surface coating Produced by Alicia DeSantis, Jolie Ruben, Tala Safie and Josephine Sedgwick, it is a visual column that explores the intersection of art and life.