Climate change devastating the glaciers of the French Alps

Visitors arriving at the last tram stop before the 4,809 meter summit on the Mont-Blanc mountain range in the French Alps are forced to cross an additional 20 steps each year to reach the retreating glacier "Mer de Glace".

Older visitors who come back may remember a moment when they could touch the ice just at the Montenvers tram stop, in the shadow of the Mont Blanc summit.

A sign in the valley says: "Glacier level: 1990." Now the ice has decreased considerably.

On the glacier itself, the once pristine surface is now depressed and greyish.

A cave visible through the frozen blue mbad of the glacier illuminated with festive lights, like a nightclub, has become a popular stop for tourists.

Now, workers have draped white tarps held in place with large stones on the ice tunnel to protect it from the sun.

And mountaineers on the surrounding peaks follow a new ritual. At the sound of mountain water, they stop more often to listen to the clatter of rocks that fall on the highest peak in Europe.

The damage is more and more obvious thanks to the falling rocks that heal the side of the mountain and the routes taken by climbers going to Mont Blanc.

The most spectacular of these landslides touched the Bonatti pillar, a mbadive rock column named after the Italian mountaineer Walter Bonatti, who collapsed in a cloud of dust in June 2005.

In 2011, smaller collapses also affected the same area, and four years later, landslides in the Couloir du Gouter prevented hundreds of mountaineers from climbing Mont Blanc by the busiest routes. . More falls followed.

During the 1970s, the famous mountaineer and French mountain guide Gaston Rebuffat described the hundred best itineraries of Mont Blanc.

Half a century later, a team of researchers badyzed snow conditions, the state of ice and rocks, accessibility and risks on 95 Rebuffat routes.

The study published in June by Jacques Mourey, PhD student at the EDYTEM laboratory at the University of Savoie Mont Blanc, revealed that 93 people were affected by climate change, of which 26 were severely affected and 3 completely destroyed.

Among the changes that have made these routes more complex and technically challenging include the appearance of more fragile bedrock, snow and ice and widening crevices.