Reccemag- to Earth with Love

Vanishing Glaciers of the Matterhorn Michal Pyka We are living in a weird world. In the world whose climate is rapidly changing in reaction to our actions. It does not make any sense to desperately deny the facts as some scientific deniers or misinformed politicians are trying to do. Matterhorn's Western glaciers Immediately after I get out of the train in Zermatt, I take a look above - towards the mountains – at Klein Matterhorn and Breithorn. I clearly see a distressing picture of greyish shade of the remaining snow. Once upon a time, the Alpine glaciers shined like diamonds in the crown of Alpine peaks, glittering in the sunlight along the skyline of the Alps and they were mightily beautiful. So, unfortunately, their present appearance – just the few open glacier fields – does not blow the mind with its beauty like it did before. The snow is grey and one can see from a distance that it is wet, heavy and matt. Such greyish snow is characterized by lower albedo, and ...

Editor's Note: Since early March 2020, we were experiencing problems with our website. While we were working towards fixing the problems, Covid-19 happened. Since Reccemag is run by volunteers and volunteers are humans with other commitments and priorities too, we could not come up with a solution in between. Finally, we have decided to shift our contents, one article at a time to this temporary blog.   Adventure in the mountains                                              Gautam Dutta Digging ice hole for shelter on the North Face of Everest. Photo courtesy: Gautam Dutta About the author: Gautam Dutta is one of those rare Indian mountaineers who in the eighties and the early nineties, had not only set the trend of self supported, alpine style ascents in remote ranges of the Himalaya; but also climbed hard, looking for aesthetically beautiful lines...