Find me a glacier

The mountains of the Himalayas feed its glaciers. Every winter, the snow that covers the peaks, travels down the valleys. There, layer upon layer of snow collects. The cold turns it into trapped ice, which melts slowly. Nothing lives here; all you see are spiders and butterflies, possibly lost. At the snout of any valley glacier, there is always flowing water. In some, it is a gushing river, in others it is a small stream. This stream flows down the valley, carrying with it mud. Here, one begins to see the first forms of life — tiny blades of grass, little insects, redstarts and possibly some larger mammals. One also sees shepherds from the plains on the lookout for pastures. Solitary snow leopards jostle for survival with hardy bharal, and the occasional bear lumbers across the valley.

As this tiny stream continues down the valley, it meets larger streams, all of them coming together to become bigger and more forceful. Soon enough, it meets a river, which is by now violent shades of brown mud and white spray. The terrain is still too steep for human interference but the grass has given way to scraggly trees, which will give way to pines, oaks and deodars at lower altitudes. Little villages appear. Mammals become plentiful, and the prey base widens. The foothills of the Himalayas support wildlife from leopards to king cobras, and some birds come all the way from Siberia.

As it reaches the plains, the stream becomes a large river. It is more peaceful in the plains, and the floodplains allow for agriculture on a larger scale. Wheat and rice grow in plenty. So do lush forests.

The Bara Shigri, in Himachal Pradesh, is one such glacier, one that I instantly fell in love with. The name translates to ‘big glacier’. It is at the head of the Lahaul Valley, with other major glaciers — Dhaka, Chhota Shigri, Parvati — for neighbours.

My reasons for falling in love with this glacier are hard to articulate. It could be the remoteness of the arid valley, which is beyond the lush Parvati. Or the appeal of a multitude of 6,000-m peaks. Or it could be the imposing cirque, formed by the Parvati Wall, which is over 6,000m at points.

The sentiment I find difficult to explain is the connection I feel with the Earth on a glacier. Here, in the extreme landscape where only the bare essentials of life exist, I feel an umbilical bond with the planet. Where every breath is an act of survival, everything unnecessary falls apart, and I feel one with the Earth. This connection intensifies as I go higher on a glacier.

Last year, I was on the Bara Shigri to climb a mountain, but as we approached the peak, a realisation shook me — the glacier is dying.

Off to Concordia

My love affair with the glaciers of Lahaul began many years ago, when I attempted to climb the 6,234-m Peak CB-13. ‘CB’ stands for Chandrabhaga river, which originates here, at what is known as Baralacha Massif. The Chandra river is fed by the Dhaka, Bara Shigri and Chhota Shigri glaciers. The river first meets the Bhaga and then Yunam to become the Chenab, which later mingles with the mighty Indus. Along with another team of climbers, we climbed a new route on Mt Khang Shilling (6,360m). From the summit, we enjoyed a view of the entire glacier, from névé to snout.

In 2017, I returned to Bara Shigri with my Canadian climbing partner Taylor Maavara, who is currently an Earth scientist at the University of California. Accompanying us was the government’s liaison officer, Sakshi Katoch. As climbers, our objective was to chart a new route on the 6,526-m Shigri Parbat, which is close to the head of the glacier. We also had another objective — to assess the changes in the glacier since my last visit.

We drove to Manali from Delhi where we put together a team of porters, cook and kitchen staff. A pick-up truck was hired to drive us to Batal, the roadhead. A small outpost at the bottom of the Kunzum la, Batal connects Lahaul and Spiti. We began our walk at Batal.

We crossed the river over an iron bridge. The first challenge was crossing the Karcha nala, a fast-flowing stream infamous for claiming many lives. A couple of hours’ easy walk, and we pitched our first tent at the snout of the glacier. “The next camp is only a few hours away,” I told Maavara. We started early the next morning, leaving behind half the food supplies at the camp for later use.

Between snout camp and base camp — the latter at a place called Concordia — was 12 km of medial moraine. It is the debris of rocks, from little specks of sand to massive boulders, which runs through the centre of a valley. Walking on this is extremely challenging as one must constantly look for a new path, going over boulders, around them, and there is always the danger of falling rocks.

I remembered it was much easier walking this moraine in 2013. As glaciers melt, one of the first impacts on mountaineering is that we must walk on moraine instead of ice. It took us 12 hours to reach the intermediate camp, where we found a radio tower that looked at least 30-ft high. It must have taken superhuman effort to carry the parts up to this height.

It took us another long day over the moraine to reach Concordia. We pitched tents on a bed of shale, on a ridge of lateral moraine. The porters were too tired to return to the snout camp, so they huddled inside one large tent, and our cook dished out hot khichdi.

Observing the glacier, I felt like it had shrunk. While glaciers are beautiful, from up close, it is deadly. They have crevasses, and a fall into one could mean death. For this reason, mountaineers are aware when a glacier is alive, and is trying to intimidate — senses are heightened; every groan of ice, every boom of avalanche makes the adrenaline flow.

The climbing fiasco

Two days later, Maavara and I began walking up the glacier. I, rather unconsciously, compared every view to that of four years ago. The large walls of ice seemed smaller. What used to be a deep crevasse seemed like only a crack. After about eight hours of trudging along the glacier, we camped on a ridge of moraine.

The next morning, we began walking up to the base of the route we had scoped out before we left for this expedition. We branched off a narrow, steep valley to the north, and walked into a small cwm from where we thought we might be able to access Shigri Parbat.

Branching off the glacier, we found more moraine. We had studied this route on Google Earth, and had expected to walk on ice. Sadly, there were only rocks under the feet. I struggled on the walk, my stomach cramping badly. Our spirits wilted when we reached the bottom of the wall we intended to climb. What should have been a wall of snow and ice, which is easier to climb, looked like dry rock. There was no route up the wall, and boulders kept rolling off it. Tears in our eyes, we lumbered back to the previous camp. We decided to abort the climb — also due to a stomach infection that had weakened me considerably — and return home.

As we packed our bags, Maavara and I talked about what we had seen. It seemed to me that the glacier had receded. When glaciers recede, they do not just reduce in length, but also in thickness. “The frequency of rock and ice fall here seems to be clear evidence of climate change — I’ve never climbed anywhere else where there was rock fall at a frequency of every half hour or so,” said my fellow climber.

Fears come true

Back to the plains, Maavara began to study the research on the glaciers of this region. We had seen research stations on the Bara Shigri. I had also spotted one on the Dhaka glacier on another climb, and knew of another on the Chhota Shigri. We learned that the research had been undertaken by the National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research in Goa, Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, as well as independent scientists.

Here is what Maavara found: The Bara Shigri is the third-largest glacier in India. Between 1977 and 1995, its snout receded by 650m, or an average of 36.11m a year (Anthwal et al 2006). This rate of recession is the highest of any glacier recorded in India (Bajracharya et al 2006). (Interestingly, the Chhota Shigri, which is in the next valley to the west, has the lowest rate of retreat in India.) From 1963 to 1997, the overall loss of glacier volume in India was about 23 per cent (almost a quarter of the ice disappeared). The Bara Shigri is in the headwaters of the Indus river, on which more than 200 million people rely for water. It is estimated that around 40 per cent of the water in the Indus basin comes from glacial melt. By 2065, this melt is likely to result in depletion of the volume of water available for irrigation — this could mean less food for 26 million people. In global terms, the Himalayan climate change is a threat to 4.5 per cent of the world population’s food security (Immerzeel et al 2010).

These numbers are indisputable. But I decided to talk to more experts. I called Anindya Mukherjee, an accomplished mountaineer, in Kolkata. I asked about the changes he has seen in the glaciers since 2001, the year he started mountaineering. “It’s massive,” he replied. Mukherjee told me of a 1935 photograph of a glacier . The same river of ice is now a fraction of its former size — as seen in a picture he clicked recently . “But,” I insisted, “what about in the last few years? Have you seen anything, in the last five years, that worries you?” He spoke of his ascent of Sunanda Devi East, the 7,434-m behemoth in the Nanda Devi Biosphere, Uttarakhand. He attempted it in 2013, and went back to it a year later. “In just one year, the mountain looked totally different. In 2014, I found that the ice-covered face was gone — it had become a rock face.” Mukherjee recounted similar stories from his climbs in other places, from Zanskar Valley in Ladakh to Zemu glacier in Sikkim.

Wearing thin: Whether Zanskar Valley in Ladakh or the Zemu in Sikkim, India’s overall loss of glacier volume between 1963 and 1997 was about 23 per cent. Seen here is a camp in the Zanskar range

According to Dhruv Joshi, a Himalpine climber and member of the Indian Mountaineering Foundation, there are several reasons why some glaciers recede more than others. “From the direction in which the valley faces, the sun it gets, to the winds in the valley... But one thing is certain, glaciers are getting smaller. The snow feeds the glaciers, and the problem is that while there is still snowfall, the timing is either too early or too late. So it melts before it can consolidate.”

As mountaineers, we are privileged to be able to interact with glaciers before they become history. But the question that comes to mind — if these glaciers is where life begins, what happens when they are no more? Where do rivers get their waters from? When the waters dry up, how will the forests grow, and what will we eat?

Karn Kowshik is a mountaineer and climate change explorer

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