Just got back from skiing the Vallée Blanche, one of the world’s classic ski tours. We skied down from the top of the Aiguille du Midi through the Mer du Glace, surrounded by crevasses and seracs.

It’s really frightening to see just how much the glaciers here have melted. The Mer du Glace, one of Europe’s longest glaciers is rapidly shrinking at a rate of about one centimeter and hour. At the end of the Vallée Blanche there are markers showing where the glacier came to in 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2003; the difference between 2003 and now is immense and the difference between 1980 and now is truly shocking. I can’t even imagine what the Mer du Glace (or any of the other glaciers) will look like in ten or twenty years.

Vallée Blanche and Mer du Glace

At the end of the Vallée Blanche