WIRED TALKING ICE I MANASSEH FRANKLIN On screen, the calving appears to begin collecting time-lapse photos across four glaci- had captured the glacier’s decline as it steadily in slow motion. First, seracs start crumbling ated regions in three countries, the film offers shriveled into the mountain valley. along the surface of the glacier, which seconds something else: a visual story line of loss We pulled the canoe into a slippery crack prior had appeared still and calm. Large staggering in its sheer magnitude and over- in glacier-smoothed stone, and we scrambled chunks plummet into the water and roll over whelming in its undeniable reality. On screen, out. The camera box sat perched on a tall to expose the cobalt blue of centuries-old ice. glaciers appear like living creatures: powerful monopod: four cables stretched from the box A chain reaction spreads as the rumbling and yet simultaneously fragile and mutable. The into bolts embedded in the rock. Matthew crashing disrupts adjacent masses. Suddenly, a images give audiences a sense of proximity to procured a tool kit from his pack and opened mile-long swath, with seracs more than twice the urgency of vanishing ice in a startling and the weatherproof, tamperproof box. He pulled the size of most skyscrapers, buckles and crum- awe-striking way. out the camera, turned it on and began to page bles into the ocean. Two years after the documentary through the photos. This scene of a dramatic calving event on premiered, I sat in the middle of a silver “The card’s full,” he reported. “And it looks Greenland’s Ilulissat Glacier, also known as aluminum canoe on Mendenhall Lake at the like we lost a couple of months.” Sermeq Kujalleq, appears in the 2012 docu- mouth of the Mendenhall Glacier (Sitaanta- I peered over his shoulder at the view- mentary Chasing Ice—a film that helped bring agu) near Juneau, Alaska. At the bow and the finder. His thumb tapped the button rapid- the seriousness of climate change into wide- stern were Matthew Kennedy and his assistant fire. Hundreds of images streamed past, most spread public consciousness. Chasing Ice won Drew Fink, two members of the Extreme Ice of them clouded with condensation. an Emmy and was shown across all seven conti- Survey. Waterproof stuff sacks of camera gear But slowly the pictures became clearer: the nents and in more than 172 countries. Posted filled the space between us. Light rain misted Mendenhall’s fractured front lit by pink dawn; on YouTube in 2012, the clip I just described on our jackets. ice glinting in bright midday sun; seracs gleam- has since acquired more than 58 million views, At the edge of the glacier, we paddled past ing in golden evening and then turning shad- and that’s merely on one channel. glossy, blue-tinted icebergs toward the north- owy in dusk, their edges faintly outlined in Chasing Ice follows the underfunded east side of the lake, where a large rock slab darkness. The face of the glacier stark, cold, origins of the Extreme Ice Survey—a photo- bulged out of the cliff face. We were heading its cracks concealed by snow. Ice on the lake graphic art and science organization—and for a station where a camera had been snap- broken up. Icebergs dotting still water. showcases the passion of the founder James ping photos every day over the past seven I shivered, watching a year of the glacier’s Balog. But as its focus turns to the cameras years. As of 2014, more than 90,000 images life play out before my eyes. 103 My first encounter with glacial ice occurred We woke to a hot sun, and we made a slip- around wide crevasses and skied over narrow on a late June day in Alaska a year before. I was pery, loose traverse over eroding moraine to the ones. In the middle of a crack roughly two feet visiting a good friend on the Kenai Peninsula edge of the ice. When our crampons finally across, I paused, my ski tips on one side, their who asked if I wanted to ski on a glacier in crunched the pebble-studded surface, we stuffed tails on the other. I glanced down. summer. This was my first trip to Alaska, and sunscreen up our nostrils. Keep your mouths Two electric blue walls plunged into a black I jumped at the proposition. closed, Helen’s friend warned, lest we burn the crease. My stomach fluttered with sudden Prior to that journey, the most I knew roofs of them while panting in the heat. awareness of the abyss beneath me, my thin about glaciers was that they were melting. Al Some Alaskans call this glacier The Woz, skis the only thing between me and that empty Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth had hit theaters which gives the place a musical, magical reso- space. What is down there? I wondered. What is when I was in college. Shortly afterward, polar nance with the Land of Oz. It is a gateway to this strange world we’ve come to? bears became listed as a “threatened species” under the US Endangered Species Act. Photo- graphed on thawing icebergs, the bears quickly became a tragic poster image of global warm- ing. But such pictures seemed far away from my everyday life. I grew up in Pennsylvania, a state in which glaciers have been extinct for some 20,000 years. Later, I moved to Colo- rado, where many of the glaciers that remain in shaded alpine zones could easily be mistaken for perennial snow patches. As a climber and ski mountaineer in the central Rockies, I encountered other remnants—granite amphi- theaters, u-shaped valleys, house-sized boulders strewn along valley edges and floors—though I didn’t always recognize these landscape features as traces that long-vanished glaciers had left behind. Instead, I saw glacial erratics, such as those strewn about Independence Pass, as perfect problem cubes for a day of roadside bouldering. Lofty cirques, high in the Elk Mountains, lent delightfully steep ski lines in stable spring snow. Once, during a climbing trip in Alberta, I paddled the milky glacial melt of Maligne Lake and hiked along the ragged edges of the Brazeau Icefield. Even then, as my fingertips [Opening Page] Drew Fink gazes at the ceiling of the Mendenhall ice cave. Weeks later, the Anchorage Daily News report- skimmed the meltwater and crumbled moraine ed its collapse. l [This Page] Matthew Kennedy on the Mendenhall Glacier (Sitaantaagu). As it shrinks, bedrock appears, as well as remnants of old forests that the glacier had plowed over during the Little Ice Age. Manasseh Franklin (both) dusted my boots, the glaciers seemed to me like ornamental pieces of landscape, far from the world of human consumption and envi- the Harding Icefield, a serac-lined portal to a We made camp on a rock island embed- ronmental destruction. The Glaciers Are Shrink- remote, icy and mysterious world. With our ded in the glacier. As the evening light kalei- ing, headlines read, but I didn’t know what that sights set on a base camp partway up the glacier, doscoped across a jumble of seracs, the Woz phrase really meant for landscapes, ecosystems, we moved peacefully that day, enchanted by appeared fully unique and alive—a far cry climate or even humans. The words were the surroundings despite our shoulder-bruis- from impersonal headlines. Why was it that hollow for me until I visited Alaska. ing, eighty-pound packs. The sun’s electric each time I’d seen the word glacier in the news In June 2013, the bush plane skidded rays stirred wavy mirages above the ice. As we I’d felt so disconnected before? across a silty lake amid the emerald valley sides continued up a broad, gentle incline, constant of the Kenai Peninsula. Two friends and I made gurgles and hisses rose from the glacier’s surface, Since I started paying attention to news cover- camp on the gravel shore that night, and I fell filling the air with a kind of melody. At a blue age of melting glaciers and climate change, I asleep to the sound of mosquitoes bouncing meltwater channel, we paused, hands cupped, encountered recurring patterns of shock and off the tent walls. Upstream, the thick ice of to bring the icy water to our hot lips. fear. More often than not, reports focus on what a glacier groaned as it shifted. Occasionally By midday, we reached the snow line, we have already lost, and what more we have left pieces cracked off and splashed into a steady where we switched from crampons to skis. My to lose: “A Glacier Disappears in Alaska” (The stream of glacial melt that funneled into the skins stuck like Velcro on snow that had turned Atlantic); “Glaciers are Retreating. Millions nearby lake. tacky beneath the cloudless sky. We zigzagged Rely on Their Water” (The New York Times); 104 “Human society under urgent threat from The options for action can seem minuscule coming, and begin to rethink what it means loss of Earth’s natural life,” (The Guardian). compared to the magnitude of the problem. Yes, to have hope.” The headlines ring like alarm bells: something we can recycle, drive less, install solar panels on Franzen’s essay prompted fervent backlash terrible is happening and if we don’t take action our houses, vote for more ecologically friendly from scientists and journalists alike. Many of now, the consequences will be catastrophic. legislation, but still, Antarctic ice shelves are these writers shared a sense of the severity of Scientific studies corroborate these warn- snapping off and drifting out to sea, Australia the climate crisis, but they expressed concerns ings.