The catchment area of the Great Aletsch glacier comprises 4 firn areas: the Great Aletsch firn, the Jungfrau firn, the Ewigschneefäld and smaller Grünegg firn (from west to east), which merge at the Konkordiaplatz and accumulate at their interfaces mighty middle moraines, the Kranzberg and Trugberg moraines. These middle moraines dominate with their curved shape the appearance of the Great Aletsch glacier.
At the Konkordiaplatz the glacier bed is massively over deepened. In 1990 and 1991 an ice thickness of approximately 900 m was measured by hot water drilling. The bedrock has not been reached, since an ice-debris mixture made a further advance impossible.
Where got the Konkordiaplatz its name? On August 12, 1857 the Englishman John Frederick Hardy, Reverend at the University of Cambridge visited the Great Aletsch glacier and camped beneath the Fülbärg, the place of today's Konkordiahütte. At the sight of the magnificent glacier landscape he was completely overwhelmed and compared the wide area with its icy tributaries with the Place de la Concorde in Paris and called it "The Place de la Concorde of Nature". The name Konkordiaplatz was created.