Glacial Flow, Sibinacocha

When a fierce, deep crack reverberates and all heads bob from ice to sky, unsure whether the tremor resulted from the cracking of ice or the sound of lightning, I feel again the glaring Beauty of this place. Beauty meaning not one or another pretty thing, but capital-B Beauty, that dynamic and therefore ephemeral quality we find in nature and in each other, all things subject to time. This landscape is ever dynamic, though its movements have shifted. It flows differently. 

From 17,500 meters above sea level, I write to you from a four-season tent pitched in precious soft ground and surrounded by the crystalline rocks of the Cordillera Vilcanota, the second most glaciated tropical mountain range in the world. To the Northwest is a trail I've walked many times. It leads to the base of Hatunrit'i, “Big Snow”, a peak aptly named, as it is enveloped in snow and ice such that I cannot discern its lithic figure. This is the fault of glaciers which have continuously carved out its hidden shape, all the while covering their tracks as more flakes fall on top; snow both drives the downward process and ensures an uninterrupted cycle of flow. Hatunrit'i and her two shorter sisters, peaks to the left and right, exhibit summit domes, the trick of glaciers, which still grace these peaks, the tallest in a pass which connects the east and the west, the Pacific and the Amazon. 

The lower peaks, back down the trail, and rising directly before my open tent door, are the tortured, jagged peaks I expect of a formerly glaciated landscape. The metamorphic mountains have been scooped out by glaciers; u-shaped valleys mark their path from peak to valley to the great Lago Sibinacocha below. Large hills of pulverized rock, plucked from the mountain, pushed down and out, line the trail of these glacial ghosts. The “moraines” are tell-tale signs of the size and timing of late ice flows.

It is easy to step into a landscape and imagine it timeless, or perhaps place it into the context of “deep time.” We imagine the geologic timescale so vast that we cannot perceive its motions, let alone affect its processes. But here in the Vilcanota, this notion is confronted by the awesome skyline of Hatunrit’i and the down-valley peaks, progressively deglaciating to stark, black forms, which lead to Sibinacocha, the largest alpine lake in the Andes, ever breaking its own record. They too were clothed, shrouded in ice like Hatunrit’i, but this century’s melting has unveiled evidence of violent carving and powerful flows once hidden from view.

As you, my reader, are bound to guess, based on the context of a changing global climate, Hatunrit’i will soon be unrobed, her wide gown removed, revealing the scars of glaciers that once carved her form.

The flows are shifting. Though precious ice remains, it no longer flows – melt water does instead. There is no longer enough snow added to Hatunrit’i’s peak to initiate the downward motion. Vilcanota’s glaciers, like almost every other glacier on Earth today, are receding (see graph). It is melting from the bottom up. The cracks I hear are not healthy sounds of flow, but telltale signs of a dying glacier.

For me, a budding geologist, I usually find myself in a state of awe at geologic power – the explosivity of a supervolcano, strength of an earthquake tearing rock apart, the heat and pressure that gives rise to hot springs. It seems dangerously hubristic to say that man’s industry has halted a geologic force that has shaped some of our most cherished landscapes including Yosemite, the Rocky Mountains, even New York City. But it has been demonstrated time and time again, and internationally recognized since 1995 (IPCC Second Assessment Report). The world’s scientists have agreed for 19 years that man’s influence is discernible in the climate record, and that our greenhouse gas emissions are causing an overall warming effect on the planet.

The flows have changed. Flowing ice is flowing water. A planet with a climate stable enough for the evolutionary success of the human species is shifting further and further away from the one to which we are adapted. The catalyst for change may be human, but the system’s response will not necessarily favor us. In fact, as the climate up here in the Peruvian Andes warms, three frog species have found a new habitat. As can be seen in the hundreds of millions of years of evolutionary record, climatic change selects some, and extincts others.

I am up here studying frogs. But I am also here to bear witness. I listen for her cracks. I cheer for snowfall. I climb inside her caves and caverns. And I still hold onto a (perhaps) naïve hope that my grandchildren will know the word “glacier” and visit a a mountain wrapped in white, with its ice flow in full force, and not to be left with a barren, scarred landscape – the evidence of our heedless march.

Figure 4.13 from IPCC Assessment Report 4, Working Group 1, 2007.

Large-scale regional mean length variations of glacier tongues (Oerlemans, 2005). The raw data are all constrained to pass through zero in 1950. The curves shown are smoothed with the Stineman (1980) method and approximate this. Glaciers are grouped into the following regional classes: SH (tropics, New Zealand, Patagonia), northwest North America (mainly Canadian Rockies), Atlantic (South Greenland, Iceland, Jan Mayen, Svalbard, Scandinavia), European Alps and Asia (Caucasus and central Asia).

A Week in Cusco

The past week I've been in Cusco and the surrounding beautiful Sacred Valley. It has been an incredible experience so far, and equally a test of my ability to feel content with solitude and my ability to reach out to others, Peruvians and international travelers alike, to make real connections despite their ephemeral nature.

My fondest memories have been the moments I've challenged myself. I figured out public transportation alone and rode buses to various towns in the Sacred Valley, a dramatic landscape outside of Cusco with dramatic v-shaped valleys, lush with eucalyptus and other trees and sprawling with agricultural land, bounded by steep sides foothills with the snow capped Andes beyond. I hiked through these towns, Chincero, Urubamba, Pisac, and their ruins, reveling in their beauty and my ability to wander at my own pace. I've had conversations with locals about religion, family life, climate change, religion... And have learned a lot about the Peruvian way of life.

Now I'm off to the Cordillera Vilcanota for the next 2 weeks to serve as a research assistant for Kelsey Reider. She is studying frogs and climate change and I'll be camping at 17,000 feet for the next two weeks to assist!

Until I return!

The Day in which I leave SF

Cusco Airport

As my mom dropped me off at the San Francisco International Airport, I had for the first time a realization that would continue to flash through my mind for the first 48 hours of my trip to Peru: “Holy f***. I’m actually doing this.” When I backpacked through Europe with Libby Cooper in 2009 and ventured through SE Asia with my sister Shelley in 2010, I first discovered that it was fairly common for women and men to travel by themselves, oftentimes for great periods of time-- 6 months, 1 year, 2 and counting… I saw the benefits in this experience; spontaneity, self-reliance, never having to compromise. What’s more, these people never really seemed lonely. The hostels are set up for making connections with other travelers. Nevertheless, in that moment, it felt daunting and foreign. But I strapped on my two backpacks and stepped into the airport alone.  

My first flight was to Mexico City. An eighteen-year old flower child eyed me out as a potential friend and switched seats to sit with me. She was scrawny with mildly unkempt brown hair and a sweet face. She wore a second-hand wool top and a chartreuse velvet skirt that almost reached her ankles. An aspiring herbalist, she fit bill, and was heading to a 2-week Plant Lovers Tour of Costa Rican organic farms and ecovillages. Throughout the flight she dropped a vinegary marijuana tincture under her tongue (“This is my marijuana!”), spritzed her body with cardamom (“Chai tea perfume!!”), rubbed her lips with homemade balm, and applied tea tree oil to her apparently acne prone face. All of these were unlabeled, homemade creations. The girl was a recent transplant to Eureka, where she and her boyfriend moved to clip marijuana, apparently her favorite word, as she used it 50 or more times that 4 hour flight.

The Mexico City Airport was gaudy as expected. Samsung has taken over the place, providing charging stations and large monitors perhaps for information or advertisements, but all displaying error messages. However, there was a brief moment of magic. As I sat in my gate, something black caught my eye. At first glance I thought it was a sparrow, then my stomach tightened as I saw the way it flew, bat-like, but it turned out to be a moth. As big as my outstretched hand, my eyes followed it as it passed high above my head. I stared, wide-eyed at my first taste of Latin American wildlife, and found my look of disbelief and awe mirrored in a young Peruvian woman across from me. No one else seemed to notice, and it soon disappeared deep into the terminal.

On my redeye to Lima, I the same realization but in a more panicked, desperate manner. I found myself next to an Argentine and a Peruvian. Pablo, a man of the circus business, spoke Spanish with an impossibly difficult to understand Argentinian accent. The Peruvian was to his right, and too far away to hear properly. Our communication was strained and more than once they suggested we speak in English. By the end of the flight they had made it clear that they could not believe I was traveling alone, and that I had better learn some Spanish, quickly. Needless to say, as I entered Peru I was discouraged, and I had to give myself a little talking to in line for immigration: Change your attitude. It’s too late to turn back now.

The final stretch was a one hour flight to Cusco. I sat with a Cusqueño who didn’t speak a world of English. At once she told me about a room for rent in her house. Cheap if I help her with the three girls, she told me. We exchanged numbers, but so far, I haven’t called.

As I had planned, a man with a sign bearing my name was waiting outside the airport. He helped me with my ridiculous amount of things to Kokopelli Hostel, which I had booked before I left. A shockingly smooth trip, I had finally arrived in Cusco.

Here I go...