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Melting glaciers or melting hearts in the Mountains

With abnormally high temperatures this summer and when most of France are sweating away in the heat wave, is it just fun for everyone, or is there a bigger picture higher up the slopes?

This week saw five consecutive days with the isotherm reaching above 4000m metres. To you and I that means that you have to rise to 4000m before the temperature will drop below zero degrees Celsius. That means everywhere in Western Europe is above freezing point. That may not appear to be too much of a problem until you start to think that every single cubic centimetre of the millions and millions of tonnes of ice in the hundreds of thousands of glaciers is submitted to a temperature above freezing and is melting!

The temperatures may only get above freezing for a short period of time but the effect of that can be totally devastating.
Chamonix alone has hosted a rise in the amounts of summer avalanches forming in the massif du Mont Blanc with life risking results and the prospect of snow bridges collapsing underfoot. This put's enormous threats on the lives of the thousands of people that trudge up the highest point in Europe to stand on the peak of Mont Blanc.

It's quite astounding to think that you can reach Europe's highest summit and still not reach zero degrees Celsius. Unfortunately for me it was minus 35 degrees when I summited Mont Blanc - so I wasn't able to hang around to enjoy the view!

So is this going to be a threat to the livelihoods of the business owners of Chamonix? Initialy you may think so. With increasing temperatures surely would become less snow in the winter and would that spell the end for ski related businesses? Not just yet. It was the peak of summer when the isotherm reached above 4000 metres.

With temperatures that drop well below minus 20 degrees in the winter I don't think we have anything to worry about just yet. And Chamonix will not have anything to worry about just yet either. Because it is one of the highest ski areas in Europe, with the scare of global warming, everyone will be checking their geography books before booking their holidays and making sure that they reach high ground.

The Aiguille du Midi cable car is the highest cable car in the alps so that should keep Chamonix in the black.

By: Timothy Blunt

I gave up the rat race 4 years ago to move to the French Alps I am actively involved with:

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