Climate change closes the world's highest ski run
The 18,000-year-old glacier in Bolivia that provided the world with its highest ski run has just finished completely drying up, thanks to our old pal climate change. And of course, it’s taken the run with it. Now, thrill-seeking skiers will no longer be able to bomb down the slopes at 17,785 ft–but far worse, the glacier will no longer provide much needed water to the 2 million people that live around Bolivia’s nearby capitol La Paz. The glacier has dried up 6 years earlier than most predictions had foreseen–the nasty work of global warming. Bloomberg reports:
Chacaltaya, bridge of ice in the Aymara Indian language, has been a barren slope devoid of permanent snow for about six months. That’s when the glacier succumbed to warming weather during the Southern Hemisphere’s summer, its final two glacial tongues melting away even faster than the year 2015 that scientists had forecast for its disappearance.
Scientists, as expected, cited climate change as the culprit for the premature vanishing. Locals, many of whom skied the mountain all their lives, are devastated.
“Chacaltaya was my bride in white, now she’s dressed for a funeral,” Alfredo Martinez, 74, said of the 17,785-foot-high (5,280 meters) glacier where he and Club Andino Boliviano members skied its sole run north of La Paz, Bolivia’s capital.
But far more than a ski run has been lost here–a crucial part of Bolivia’s water supply has been disrupted as well. …
