October 4, 2018
By Sean Flynn
...More to the point, (click here) it was more common than one would imagine for long-dead bodies to surface in melting glaciers.
Almost exactly a year earlier, in July 2016, the remains of a German skier missing since 1963 were found on a glacier in eastern Switzerland, near the Italian border. The year before that, two Japanese men who tried to climb the Matterhorn in 1970 were found far down the mountain. In 2012, the skeletons of Johann, Cletus, and Fidelis Ebener turned up on the Aletsch glacier, 86 years after they vanished. And Theiler couldn't know it yet, but a month later a German hiker last seen in 1987 would be dug out of another glacier in Valais, the same canton where he found the two bodies at the bottom of an intermediate ski run.
People have been disappearing on glaciers for as long as people have been walking on glaciers. And for most of human history, they were simply gone, vanished, entombed in a hopelessly deep, dense river of ice, carried away by a slow, grinding current. How many, no one knows, because that number is lost to time. For a benchmark, though: Since 1925 (when records first began to be kept), almost 300 people have disappeared in Valais alone, though not all, of course, on a glacier....
...According to one recent study, the glacier atop Alaska's Mount Hunter is melting at the fastest rate in 400 years. Colombia's glaciers have thinned by a third since the mid-1990s and are on track to disappear entirely in 30 years. In the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau, two-thirds of the glacial mass could be gone by the turn of the century. And Glacier National Park in Montana—which was named for the 150 or so glaciers once there—today has fewer than 30. “The rate of change now in the mountain glaciers is already faster than anything we see in the geological record,” says Joerg M. Schaefer, a climate geochemist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “They just fly back. And it's accelerating.”...
This rapid melt is not surprising to me. The heat of infrared is building in altitude. As years and not even decades go by now, the heat is rising to thousands of feet and not simply to the frost line as was the case not long ago. At least it doesn't seem long ago to me, about three decades have passed since the worst of the warming began.
As the heat rises in altitude there will be faster melting of snow and glaciers. The problem with the heat melting the snow is that ends the recharge of the glacier. Recharge occurs over time with a great deal of weight of the snow year after year accumulation. When the snow melts there is no recharge and then the glacier begins to deteriorate because there is no recharge and the heat is directly against the ice. Glacier ice is dense and beautiful, but, the melting point is still just above zero degrees Centigrade.
...Even in the summer, thunderheads can gather quickly in the east and drag over the peaks, and fog can descend fast and viscous. The effect is utterly disorienting, every landmark erased, no spatial cues, not even footprints, to confirm that you've turned one way or another. The visible world restricts to inches, which is a dangerously short distance at 3,000 meters. It was more dangerous eight decades ago, or ten, or a thousand, when the glacier was still massive, a wide, fat sheet deep as a frozen lake, gouged with cracks 30, 40, even 50 meters deep. One step in the fog could easily be a step into oblivion. Which is what most likely happened to the mummies at the bottom of the intermediate slope....
It is s beautifully written article. As a side note there are modern day map finders that will help on any hike or slope. However, that is not a communication device. It provides the user with her/his location to navigate a transect or the road less traveled.
There are also apps that can help that take into account mountain terrain. But, to be as safe as possible there are "Trackers" that follow the course one has chosen. The one below is an example.
"Follow My Challenge" (click here)
The dangers the lost people encountered are real even today. But, also is the added uncertainty of melting ice and not simply melt water. Today, running melt water is also a concern. These are beautiful adventures and those that can should pursue them, but, to it with full knowledge of what you may encounter. There is no guarantee with the Climate Crisis, however.
Or perhaps it is best said by the sign at the Les Diablerets gift shop in three different languages, “Weather conditions can change rapidly. We invite you to be careful and to follow marked tracks. Be particularly careful in the event of fog or snowfall."
...According to one recent study, the glacier atop Alaska's Mount Hunter is melting at the fastest rate in 400 years. Colombia's glaciers have thinned by a third since the mid-1990s and are on track to disappear entirely in 30 years. In the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau, two-thirds of the glacial mass could be gone by the turn of the century. And Glacier National Park in Montana—which was named for the 150 or so glaciers once there—today has fewer than 30. “The rate of change now in the mountain glaciers is already faster than anything we see in the geological record,” says Joerg M. Schaefer, a climate geochemist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “They just fly back. And it's accelerating.”...
This rapid melt is not surprising to me. The heat of infrared is building in altitude. As years and not even decades go by now, the heat is rising to thousands of feet and not simply to the frost line as was the case not long ago. At least it doesn't seem long ago to me, about three decades have passed since the worst of the warming began.
As the heat rises in altitude there will be faster melting of snow and glaciers. The problem with the heat melting the snow is that ends the recharge of the glacier. Recharge occurs over time with a great deal of weight of the snow year after year accumulation. When the snow melts there is no recharge and then the glacier begins to deteriorate because there is no recharge and the heat is directly against the ice. Glacier ice is dense and beautiful, but, the melting point is still just above zero degrees Centigrade.
...Even in the summer, thunderheads can gather quickly in the east and drag over the peaks, and fog can descend fast and viscous. The effect is utterly disorienting, every landmark erased, no spatial cues, not even footprints, to confirm that you've turned one way or another. The visible world restricts to inches, which is a dangerously short distance at 3,000 meters. It was more dangerous eight decades ago, or ten, or a thousand, when the glacier was still massive, a wide, fat sheet deep as a frozen lake, gouged with cracks 30, 40, even 50 meters deep. One step in the fog could easily be a step into oblivion. Which is what most likely happened to the mummies at the bottom of the intermediate slope....
It is s beautifully written article. As a side note there are modern day map finders that will help on any hike or slope. However, that is not a communication device. It provides the user with her/his location to navigate a transect or the road less traveled.There are also apps that can help that take into account mountain terrain. But, to be as safe as possible there are "Trackers" that follow the course one has chosen. The one below is an example.
"Follow My Challenge" (click here)
The dangers the lost people encountered are real even today. But, also is the added uncertainty of melting ice and not simply melt water. Today, running melt water is also a concern. These are beautiful adventures and those that can should pursue them, but, to it with full knowledge of what you may encounter. There is no guarantee with the Climate Crisis, however.
Or perhaps it is best said by the sign at the Les Diablerets gift shop in three different languages, “Weather conditions can change rapidly. We invite you to be careful and to follow marked tracks. Be particularly careful in the event of fog or snowfall."
