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. Cold glaciers at the highest locations of the European Alps have beeninvestigated by drilling ice cores to retrieve their stratigraphic climaterecords. Findings like the Oetztal ice man have demonstrated that small icebodies at summit locations of comparatively lower altitudes may also containold ice if locally frozen to the underlying bedrock. In this case,constraining the maximum age of their lowermost ice part may help to identifypast periods with minimum ice extent in the Alps. However, with recentwarming and consequent glacier mass loss, these sites may not preserve theirunique climate information for much longer. Here we utilized an existing icecave at Chli Titlis (3030 m), central Switzerland, to perform a case studyfor investigating the maximum age of cold-based summit glaciers in the Alps.The cave offers direct access to the glacier stratigraphy without thelogistical effort required in ice core drilling. In addition, a pioneeringexploration had already demonstrated stagnant cold ice conditions at ChliTitlis, albeit more than 25 years ago. Our englacial temperature measurementsand the analysis of the isotopic and physical properties of ice blockssampled at three locations within the ice cave show that cold ice stillexists fairly unchanged today. State-of-the-art micro-radiocarbon analysisconstrains the maximum age of the ice at Chli Titlis to about 5000 yearsbefore present. By this means, the approach presented here will contribute toa future systematic investigation of cold-based summit glaciers, also in theEastern Alps.

the cryosphere

Investigating cold based summit glaciers through direct access to the glacier base: a case study constraining the maximum age of Chli Titlis glacier, Switzerland