The Mer de Glace in Chamonix, the largest French glacier is a proof of global warming : It’s dying year after year…

Text and photographs : Elisabeth Perotin

Surges of ice

In the Mont-Blanc massif, the largest French glacier was called the Mer de Glace in the 18th century because of its crevasses that looked like surges of ice. The Mer de Glace is a glacial area of ​​ablation : the melting of the ice in summer is greater than the accumulation of snow in winter. The ice comes from the flow from the accumulation zone at more than 3000 meters above sea level. As the Mer de Glace threatened settlements in the valley as early as the 17th century, the glacier slowly slipped away until the 20th century. In the 21st century, it has become a tongue of gray ice covered in stones : everything has accelerated in the last 15 years. It is one of the most significant witnesses of pollution. The largest glacier in the country that melts almost visibly.

The sea of ​​ice is dying.

The Mer de Glace is receding and decreasing in thickness under the effect of the increase in temperature linked to climate change. In question, Man and his greenhouse gas emissions which continue to grow. The Mer de Glace disappears under a layer of rocks, which further accelerates its melting (rock stores more heat than ice). The numerous episodes of Saharan dust deposits this winter have not helped either: you can still see orange spots on the ice which again make it melt faster.

A hole of more than 300 meters

You can access the Mer de Glace with a small train that climbs up the mountain. A century ago, when it was installed at the Montenvers arrival station, all you had to do was walk a few meters and you were on the glacier. Today, it has melted so much that, in front of the station, there is a hole of more than 300 meters. To go down to the ice, there was first a gondola, built 23 years ago. Since then, it has melted so much that it was necessary to install, to go even lower, an iron staircase to which steps must be added each year. There are now 580. The equivalent of 34 floors.

The Ice cave of the Mer de Glace

An ice cave

At the foot of Mont Blanc. On either side of a long corridor with bluish walls, shapes are carved in the ice, over which you pass the flat of your hand as you would on the marble of a holy water font. We remove drops of water from it at our fingertips. And that’s when you realize it: everywhere, the walls ooze; the water flows from the ceiling as from a tap left open; at the entrance, a bear statue has lost its shape and expression; further on, two thrones of ice are no more than waves of seats emerging from the wall. We evolve in a world in liquefaction.

The melting of 95% of the volume of the Alpine glaciers.

White tarpaulins reflecting the sun’s rays are installed in certain places in an attempt to slow the melting. But the solution is too expensive to be generalized. However, time must be saved, because the temperature has risen by two degrees in just a century here, upsetting the entire ecosystem. By the end of the century and in the worst scenario, scientists predict the melting of 95% of the volume of the Alpine glaciers.