Death of a glacier
Wednesday September 2, 2009 - Email this article to a friend

The glacier on Mont Fort in Verbier has been there since the last ice age. Now it’s waiting for the last rites. James Cove, though, is not depressed. Quite the opposite.

In some ways it is a sorry sight.

The sound of melting ice is all around as the water cascades down the slopes and the glacier looks sort of thin and rather un-threatening. A glacier should look proud and dangerous. A temple to nature’s wonder and power.

The word ‘sad‘ seems to sum up the overall feeling as I stare across it.

Basically it has had its day.

A few years ago the resort put tarpaulins over part of it to try to halt the melting and preserve the ice. It had about the same effect as King Canute as he sat there in his throne trying to stop the tide coming in and the fabric now lies in three pieces across the glacier gently billowing about in the wind.

Nature 1, Humans 0 is my reading of that attempt.

The Mont Fort glacier is on its way out and nothing will bring it back.

However I have trekked up here by foot to over 3,000m with a friend of mine, Joanne Craig-Humphreys. She has walked to the South Pole and is in the process of planning an expedition to the North Pole. She has seen a bit of ice in her time.

But, like me, she is not depressed at the sight.

We both feel it is just part of the evolution of the planet.

Even a melting glacier is an impressive sight and whether man is causing this through his use of fossil fuels or whether it is just part of the planet’s changes seems rather immaterial.

Standing on it we are witnessing a significant change to Mother Earth and it is rather humbling to see such a sight – the death of a glacier.

What we look at will not be here in a few years and so it is worth pausing for a moment and appreciating it.

The rocks within the ice are quite stunning and we speculate how old they are and how long they have been embedded in the ice.

We listen to the water flowing out of sight under the ice.

The melt water is unbelievably cold and it is difficult to put your hand in it for longer than a few seconds. It is hard to comprehend that what we are feeling has been ice for the last few million years.

There are a few human signs; an old crampon, too many plastic bottles for comfort, a ski binding and a bit of sheared rope.

For some reasons there are several butterflies flapping their wings over the dieing glacier.

How they survive up here I have no idea.

But the overall impression is one of timelessness.

We are looking at one of nature’s true wonders.

Sitting gently on the ice and just looking around made us feel rather insignificant and we felt honoured to be up in the high mountains with no other humans around just watching the planet evolve.

The glaciers are dieing; go and appreciate them while you can is our advice.

Tread lightly.

For the spirit of the mountains.

Into the abyss