Hikers at altitude and those who live in the foothills are grappling with a vital question: As mountain conditions become more perilous than ever, how can they stay safe?
. As permafrost thaws, rock and soil once bound by below-freezing temperatures is tumbling down.
The responsibility weighs heavily on his shoulders, Rota says, and sometimes, the former ski instructor wonders if he was insane to have run for the office. But he says that the systems that he, his predecessors, and scientists have put in place help him sleep at night. But nobody here seems worried. Locals have seen avalanches and rockslides before, Patellani says, and the house her grandmother built in 1936 has never been touched. “And we have the monitoring system,” says her teenage granddaughter, Cecilia, who spent the summer foraging for mushrooms and blueberries.Please be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited.
Naturally, there are limits. Meltwater accumulating inside the glacier is a major concern. This summer alone, several meters melted off the surface of the Alps’ glaciers, an amount so dramatic it far exceeded scientists’ worst predictions to date. “These are all surface observations, but there are processes we can’t see, because they occur inside the glacier,” Giordan says.
When even nighttime temperatures at the peak were above freezing this summer, rockfalls, already the leading cause of death, rose in frequency. The mountain had become too unpredictable. Local guide associations canceled trips to the summit, and authorities issued warnings. Peillex proposed that anyone still attempting to summit should deposit 15,000 euros, enough to cover rescue efforts and a funeral service.
But this summer, conditions were so unstable even veteran alpinists struggled to make their climbs. Alpine rescue organizations were busier than ever. For hundreds of missions, they could only salvage climbers’ bodies, many killed by rockfalls on terrain that others had reported as stable just days earlier. The small province of Salzburg, Austria, alone counted 24 deaths so far this year."That's more deaths than we've ever had.
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