An aerial view of Qori Kalis.
© Carrie Vonderhaar, Ocean Futures Society/KQED
If a chunk of glacier crumbles at 17,000 feet, and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? Does anyone notice? Straddling the Quelccaya Ice Cap—the world’s largest tropical ice sheet, peaking at 18,600 feet and glazing the legendary peaks of the Andes in Peru's southeast corner—and feeding the rivers flowing into the Amazon is the glorious Qori Kalis, its main ice tongue. And it’s melting at breakneck speed.
In the distance, the glacier looks like a giant wave frozen in mid-swell, sculpted by centuries of snowstorms, its cloak of snow sparkling in the sunlight. But move in a little closer, and you’ll see a lake pooled at its bottom—an 84-acre-wide and 200-foot-deep liquid legacy of a glacier that is retreating 200 metres a year, an alarming 40 times faster than it did between 1963 and 1978.
And at this rate, the glacier may vanish entirely in as little as five years—a casualty of global warming—predicts Lonnie Thompson, a glaciologist at Ohio State University. The Quelccaya itself has shrunk by 20 percent, in danger of disappearing in 50 years.
Not only would that threaten Peru¹s and the Amazon¹s ecology, but also the water
supplies that the Peruvians rely on for drinking, crop irrigation and hydroelectric power. Glaciers act as reservoirs, accumulating ice in winter and then releasing it gradually throughout the summer as the ice melts. If the glaciers are gone then there is no water in the summer. And the locals already sense that all is not well with their glaciers, woefully observing how some of their “Apus” - deities that dwell in mountains - who once wore
brilliant white ponchos, are now bare.
So travel with our team as they drive out of Cusco, in southeastern Peru, up thousands of feet of steep, jolting road, winding around rolling hills and parched moors, spotted with llamas, alpacas and their skittish relatives vicuñas; and just past the collection of ramshackle adobe houses dotting the tiny village of Phinaya, you’ll reach a dead end at a small river. From here you’ll hike up on foot with our guide German (pronounced Herman), a mountain goat reincarnate, trekking up steep mountainsides and climbing into the thin and freezing air of 17,000 feet, finally reaching one of the most spectacular sights of the Peruvian Andes: the Qori Kalis.
© 2008 Ocean Futures Society and KQED. All rights reserved.