The Slush Busters

The artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude may be the world’s best-known wrappers: their projects have included the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, a mile and a half of coastal rocks in Australia, and the Reichstag in Berlin. But European researchers are experimenting with ways of wrapping something even bigger -- glaciers. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development predicts that 75 percent of all the glaciers in the Alps will have melted by mid-century, imperiling Europe’s $77 billion ski industry. In response, scientists have tested some 25 different “geo-textiles” designed to slow down ice melt, including welded panels of white fleece and a nonwoven polypropylene covering that is now in use at a dozen ski resorts in Switzerland, Italy, and Norway. Its splendid name: Ice Protector 500 Optiforce.