Vincent Pyramid: the Death of a Glacier
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Home / Water / Specials Vincent Pyramid: the death of a glacier The melting of glaciers narrated by a mountaineer On Sunday, 12 July 2015, while northern Italy is gasping for air and the heat seems to be overwhelming even my home town of Biella, the alarm rings at 4:30 am. A long car drive along deserted trunk roads - the only encounter being the usual fox at Borgofranco d'Ivrea - leads us to Stafal, the ancient village ... excuse me, the enormous car park... serving the sky lifts at the end of the Lys Valley. What Frachey and Saint-Jacques, in the contiguous Ayas, would presumably become if the surreal plan of a cable car connection in the protected area of the Cime Bianche were ever to be implemented! We ascend in front of what was once the Indren snowfield: a huge glacial basin, now covered by a snowfield that since 2003 is fighting for its very survival, feeding vast streams of melted snow. This is the third week in a row which sees us set foot on the glaciers, headed for the high altitudes: and it is unfortunately the third week in a row of intolerable heat, with freezing point initially set at 4800 metres, then 4400, today 4200. To then return between Tuesday 15 and Wednesday 16 July to 4900 metres. So, the point of this story is very simple: inform, disseminate, "spread" by word of mouth and especially images, the news of the illness of the great glacier. It is just below the Gnifetti Shelter, easily reached via the "rocks" with anchoring equipment, that I notice something very unnatural in the snow cover. I have been frequenting Monte Rosa for many years now, but even a novice would notice the unusual mass of bare rocks: shouldn't this be a glacier? What is happening to Garstelet? Having passed the "rocks" with anchoring equipment, here we are at Garstelet, amazingly depleted. In the background the Ayas-Lys crest. Photo by Marco Soggetto, Varasc.it The climb takes us, through a sea of crevasses, past the shelter and the western side of the great Vincent Pyramid, which we climb, arriving at the summit at 11:52 am in the strong glare of the light. The crevasses first flank, like narrow and very long knives, the trail, created by the passage of mountaineers on the ice: often the crevasses come to within one metre of the trail, but never touch it. Home / Water / Specials Crevasses, next to the trail. Photo by Marco Soggetto, Varasc.it A little further on, the crevasses become wider and even colossal, forcing us to cross the snow bridges, a thin and precarious layer of snow. It is, however, at the foot of the Balmenhorn rocks that the shock hits me in full: a huge portion of the Monte Rosa glacier has actually shifted forward and downward, creating a 2 - 3 metre step, extending for a few hundred metres in a gigantic and frightening curve! The glacial detachment is like a bracket that looks like the stands of a stadium, with a small groove in the middle: the trail goes precisely in that direction, revealing the black space of the crevasse at the foot of the step. The huge fault, viewed climbing up to Colle Vincent with the Naso in the background. Photo by Marco Soggetto, Varasc.it Home / Water / Specials Although for me this is the nth climb to the beautiful Vincent Pyramid, I am not at all at ease. Descending to Colle Vincent I notice larger crevasses than on my last visit, and once having reached the Balmenhorn above, the spectacle is even worse than the ramp below: the same shift or step, here even more massive and clean, extends as far as the snowy collar between Balmenhorn and the Corno Nero. I remembered it as a white and frozen wave, sweet to climb, scenic and windy; today it is a kind of slice not completely cut off, a ruined fabric that is marked by a huge blade. All around the Balmenhorn rocks, among the shouting of the Sunday mountaineers, I notice dirt and human faeces; at the foot of the Schwarzhorn, the same "step" surrounds the slope at the base of the peak, as if an immense hand had dug the glacier, removing its thickness and strength. A groove or glacial detachment of large proportions which extends along the collar connecting Balmenhorn to the Corno Nero, calling for caution. The glacial stretch below the collar, to the south, seems to have lost a huge amount of glacial cover Photo by Marco Soggetto, Varasc.it Lower down, at the main groove of the large step, I find a nasty surprise: the heat and the transit of the morning mountaineers have ruined the step-bridge that allowed that wide gap to be crossed, that immense sickle drawn in the glacier. It is necessary to jump, a simple manoeuvre for us who are on foot, rather more difficult for some ski tourists who we help, one at a time: off with the skis, throw the backpacks and catch the skiers on the fly, the crevasse laughing under the soles of their boots as they jump. Home / Water / Specials The "step" of before, following the collapse of the snowy bridge. Here we had to help some ski tourists to jump it. Photo by Marco Soggetto, Varasc.it On the whole a sad, depressing spectacle, like an unexpected visit to a seriously-ill friend: too many years, too many climbs up here, to remain indifferent and to be pleased for the nice day. During the descent, behind Audrey who opens the way, my mind wanders to the data of the latest Glacier Land Registry, to the data of the Glaciology Committee, to the scientific publications on this issue. I try to console myself in the knowledge that a certain rate of reduction is physiological: the glacier is alive, it moves, it cracks and it breaks. Ablation... the regressive trend, has only accelerated its pace since 2003, but it had already been in place for some time. It's like comparing the cold logic of medicine, the therapies and the time remaining with the pain and the loss, with the lack of coherent words that one feels at the bedside of a loved one who is sick and rapidly declining. I deeply love and have loved Monte Rosa since my childhood: it has always meant "something" big, for me. From here to Ayas there are rocks I have known since I was in middle school and read the novels of Tom Clancy and Clive Cussler. To see "my" mountains, my beloved glaciers, in this state is cruel - a sense of injustice and impotence that I will take with me, first to Biella, after hours of queues on the badly-managed Aosta Valley roads, and finally, increasingly rapidly eastwards, until Milan. P.S: subsequent ascents on Monte Rosa have shown that in September 2015, despite the damage caused by the record heat, the conditions have improved somewhat due to snowfalls in late August. By Marco Soggetto .