Watching a glacier die at Imja Lake

Door michiel | 11 oktober 2019

This article titled “Watching a glacier die at Imja Lake” was written by Suzanne Goldenberg, for theguardian.com on Friday 16th September 2011 12.16 UTC

It’s an odd sensation to watch a glacier die, the snow sliding off the massive black cliffs, punctuated with the cracks of big ice blocks falling away. The Mountain Institute has been doing just that, the last couple of days, watching the scenes at Imja Lake.

Imja is the fastest-growing glacier lake in Nepal. The sheer fact of its existence is evidence of the increasing pace of climate change in the high mountains of the Himalayas. The glaciers are melting – although some undoubtedly will remain solid blocks of ice for hundreds more years – and they are spattering the high altitudes with glacier lakes like Imja.

The lake, a sludgy grey-green, stands at about 5,100 metres. It’s a nine-day trek from the nearest airport at Lukla, and several days away from electricity or telephone services.

Even the Nepal government rarely ventures here. So bringing in 32 scientists from 13 countries, as the Mountain Institute has done, is a logistical nightmare.

Seventeen tents, 60kg of rice, a generator which turns out to be unreliable, and 6kg of yak cheese – it takes a lot to keep a large group going for three days.

There’s been ice outside the tents some mornings. But on clear days, there are spectacular views of the Lhotse and Nupse mountains across the river bed.

The Mountain Institute is hoping the scientists will be able to assess the hazard from Imja to the villagers living below – and come up with some solutions.

It’s been difficult to get a clear answer over the years on the likelihood of Imja one day breaking its banks, which are made of rock and debris piled over ice. By this point, however, the local people who have trekked up to the lake from nearby Dingboche say they are beyond caring what science has to say about the melting glaciers.

“We’ve been living in the shadow of this lake for so long now,” Ang Nima Sherpa, a local businessman tells me. “The only thing I am interested in hearing about now is whether they can get us a hydroelectric plant out of that lake.”

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