Pasterze Glacier, Alpine glacier near Heiligenblut, Austria.

The Pasterze Glacier runs from the Johannisberg at 3,453 m down to about 2,100 m in the uppermost floor of the Mölltal, beneath the Grossglockner. Its white and light-grey ice is scored by parallel ridges, crevasses and dark debris streaks, with a raised lateral moraine along one edge and a steep rocky slope on the other. The tongue ends a few hundred metres before the Sandersee.

Wood, peat and pollen released by the ice in 2009–2010 show moorland and pasture here between 5000 and 1500 BC, including a 200-ring Swiss pine that grew 7000 years ago. The German and Austrian Alpine Club bought the surrounding area in 1918; the glacier is now part of the High Tauern National Park.

The name Pasterze comes from a term for land fit for grazing, and until at least the 19th century it named a larger alpine farming area at the head of the upper Möll. In 2023 the NGO Protect Our Winters held a funeral for the glacier, carrying an ice coffin with a priest and a pastor.

The Franz-Josefs-Höhe on the Grossglockner High Alpine Road is the main access point; a funicular railway built in 1963 descends from there. Because the ice has melted back, a roughly 2 km hiking trail now continues from the lower station to the tongue, and it lengthens each year as the glacier loses about 10 m of thickness annually.

Meltwater from the ice feeds a reservoir that powers a generating station on the far side of the mountain range. The link between frozen heights and lowland electricity shows how mountain water can travel across watersheds.