Stubaier Alpen - Stubaital - Glaciers What you see is not snow or ice but big white tarps stretched out to preserve the ice left over and on which people have to walk. The ice on the tongues of the large glaciers is heavily thinned, and because the flow velocities are low, there is hardly any ice supply to the glaciers. In 2016 the measured glaciers retreated in an average of 14.2 meters in the Austrian mountains. 90 glaciers were observed, almost all melted back.