You enabled life on the edge, you created one of the most vulnerable ecosystems with niches adapted to a rough life up in great heights. But
these life communities are loosing its elders, its life blood.
Silently you are disapperaring. Silently you are fading into grey rock deserts.
You will be one of the first victims of climate change. Your fading should be a warning, an alarm. If we could just unmute for a sec, hearing your cracking and the running of the melting snow.
An ecosystem hit first by climate change
While the disappearing of glaciers happens far away from public awareness of the majority, the more important it is to share those stories and places.
The incredible beauty of glaciers and those very specialised ecosystems up high are getting less accessible for not professionals and consequently less captured. When mountaineering gets as dangerous as never before due to rock falls caused by melting permafrost and even more abruptly changing weather fronts. This sad reality is not only noticable following the news but also by own observations for example at the Zugspitze that was crampling in late summer (Sept) but also by friends that were suprised by sudden rock falls while multipitch climbing only by luck not being hit by bigger rocks.
While living in Munich during my Master and also while living in Northern Italy, I could capture some of those remnant Glacier baseline beauties that will more and more disappear in a heating world. When I climbed the Weissmies in 2018, I realised that when my granddad climbed it back in the 80s it was 21m higher. Today, to an expected breaking of one of the hanging ice fields, the normal route up there is no longer accessible over summer.
