Author: Garrett Fisher

When the Global Glacier Initiative was founded, the idea was to spend each season at a different mountain range, photographing as many glaciers as possible in each season. The thesis was that, by doing as much as possible per year, the highest chance of “photographing them before they are gone” would happen, and the goal might be met.

In the coming years, two things changed. First, when a glacier season ends in one mountain range, say in the Arctic, it is often not yet over in the Alps. That means that the season can be more productive by grabbing some additional glacier photos before the snows come. On this theme, sometimes the snows only hit higher elevations, and the larger glaciers can be photographed at lower altitudes down into October.

The second change is the melt rate. The Alps were completed in 2021. It was presumed, based on the melt rate of the previous 30 years, that we might photograph them again in 10 years. Well, nature had other plans. In the 2022 and 2023 summers, an astonishing 10% of existing ice melted in the Alps. In 2024, another 2.5% disappeared, totaling 1/8. 1/8^th of everything that was photographed in 2021 is already gone! The melt rate of those three years exceeds the previous 30 years combined.

With those two realities in play, then it was obvious that the season wasn’t over in August 2024 after leaving Bodø, and much work awaited in the Alps. Most of Switzerland was photographed again, with some additional work in the rest of the Alps. While it wasn’t the entire mountain range, it was certainly an incredible amount of effort, with more hours flown in August 2024 than any other month on record.

It is expected that future years will include shoulder season photography as a matter of plan, and that we will be monitoring the Alps much more closely as the glaciers disappear faster than we expected.

The original intention for 2024 was Iceland, however a slew of project maintenance delays and overruns from maintenance organizations tipped the schedule past the point of no return. 2024 would be a lost season.

Or would it? It became evident that the missed items in Norway and Sweden could be completed. What is more, they could be done so more comprehensively. In 2023, Svartisen, the second largest glacier in continental Europe, was photographed, though not as much as I would have liked.

Thus, the plan was hatched for a shorter term trip to the Arctic Circle, for an intense binge of flying based out of Bodø. This time, a vehicle would not need to be brought, so total travel time roundtrip was brought down to 6 days.

The trip was a success, with impressively warm days and glaciers showing themselves brilliantly. While that is good for photos, it is a bit sad for the glaciers, as it means that they are melting faster and therefore free of winter snows. That was even the case with Jostedalsbreen, which was visited in brief on the return trip.

All of the glaciers of mainland Norway and Sweden are now finished. I thought it would take one summer at first, and it took three, which is a good indicator of just how challenging the project is.

First snows in the Arctic and foul weather forced me and the plane out of Norway and into Switzerland, where the routine practice of shoulder season photography takes place. “Glacier season” starts when the winter snows have melted enough and goes until first snows cover them up. Sometimes, the lower tongues remain open longer, or the first snows melt. It is impossible to say. Glacier season can be 4 or 10 weeks, depending on the mountain range in question.

In this case, the Pyrenees were on my list, and I resolved to sneak down there on a shoulder season if I could. From a prior life, I have a lot of experience flying in the Pyrenees, though not for glacier reasons. This time would be targeted.

The difficulty with the Pyrenees, of which I am well aware, is the difficulty of Spanish and French restricted areas. They block out some glaciers, requiring overflight many thousands of feet above the terrain. The flight path called for passing along the edges of the restricted areas, whilst dropping to the north side of French areas by flying 3000 feet above them.

In the end, it was more work than normal and only took about 2 hours in the Pyrenees itself, as there are roughly 20 glaciers. They are melting progressively and according to some recent scientific papers, many of them have no snow growth zone, so the entire glacier is exposed to melting in the summer. They will be gone soon.

As is the case with most complex endeavors, time continues to reveal how difficult our mission is. In 2022, it was assumed all the glaciers of continental Norway and Sweden could be photographed in one season. That was quickly amended to two seasons, with 2023 scheduled for the second half.

Reality had other intentions.

Like in 2022, housing was rented for 2 months, this time in Tromsø, Norway, well above the Arctic Circle. The plane was flown almost 24 hours each way, taking 3 days each time, coupled with bringing the car from central Europe, as there was no reasonable rental option. All in all, total travel days just to get situated amounted to 14 days roundtrip.

Glacier flying itself initially went well. Weather is, on average, better north of the Arctic Circle than in the west coast of Norway, as precipitation is significantly less. It happened to be exceptionally pleasant for a number of weeks, which allowed for quite a bit to get done at first. Like in prior years, the sheer magnitude of where the glaciers are spread and their size is easy to underestimate, as the flying hours stacked up.

The obstacles began to stack up also. The first came in the form of the inspection timing for the aircraft. There is a rigid combination of hours flown and calendar dates, which meant that some glaciers south of Bodø had to be abandoned to return north to complete the required inspection. Those glaciers would wait another year before they would be photographed as the weather refused to cooperate subsequently.

The next complication arose regarding Sarek National Park in Sweden. It required an approval from the Swedish authorities, which was received, though not quite fast enough. When it did arrive, the Swedish Air Force had to temporarily override the airspace on some good weather days. The weather sadly would remain too foul before departure, so those glaciers also waited another year.

All was not lost. On a bad weather weekend, an exploratory trip to Svalbard was made by airline. It is immensely far from most anywhere on the planet, and we were only a 90-minute flight away, so the opportunity was taken to explore the possibility on the ground of future endeavors there. That remains to be seen.

Saddened and frustrated, the weather turned quite foul in September, as I am told it normally does, and it was time to leave, as the first snows already arrived for the peaks, covering Sarek National Park and ushering an end to glacier season. I will be back another time to finish those missing glaciers, though all is not a failure, as almost everything on the list was completed.

Image by AP/Bram Janssen

A photographer from the Associated Press contacted us well after The Guardian ran an article in 2021 about the formation of the Global Glacier Initiative. The goal was to produce a piece that highlighted our work, in article, photograph, and video format, and distribute it to broadcasters worldwide. Naturally, we were enthused by the concept, and it was tentatively agreed to aim for a shoot while on location in Norway.

That plan materialized, and a reporter from Denmark and a photographer from the Netherlands made their way to Norway and shadowed our work for roughly two weeks. We came perilously close to a rather serious problem, as the engine failed a critical inspection at the beginning of the shoot, though some overnight work by two engineers, and the willingness of a Norwegian aircraft owner to part with a hard-to-come-by replacement part meant the aircraft was only out of service for 18 hours.

After that, it was an introduction in the complexities of film shooting for us. Hollywood goes by a 100-to-1 ratio of hours spent to final film produced, which proved to be accurate in this case. Far more work goes into any well-done film production than most realize.

In our case, the first issue was that what was best for film shooting was not ideal for glacier photography. We spent much more time over the glaciers, getting the angles I was looking for, and then getting the angles the videographer wanted, as he was filming from directly behind me, in a different position of the aircraft.

The next complication was the shot that the videographer was after, a composition where my aircraft was heading off to the glaciers, taken from another aircraft, flown by a different pilot. Air-to-air photography is immensely complex to execute, a skill vastly different from photographing stationary objects on the ground. In the end, with the project nearly running out of time, it was completed, and some months later, the result hit the press.

When the 2022 season was being planned, it was assumed that all the glaciers of Norway and Sweden would be photographed. A house was rented for almost three months, a base of operations arranged, automotive transport brought in, and the like.

Within a few days after arrival, it was apparent that the weather is too difficult and expanses too grand in Scandinavia to complete that much terrain in one summer glacier season. The goal was immediately revised downward to focus on the glaciers of the southern part of Norway, largely south of Trondheim, as there is a sizable gap between 63 and 65N without glaciers. The northern part of Norway and Sweden would have to wait until next summer.

As it turned out, it was barely possible to complete even that revised goal…which at the last minute, it was done. This summer was terrible by even Norwegian standards, with lots of rain, clouds, and cold temperatures, and even a threat of midsummer snow, which managed to not materialize. There were many cold afternoons in July with a fire in the wood stove, keeping the cabin heated while waiting on the weather.

Complications were abundant. A part of the engine failed inspection, and engineers had to be brought in to replace a cylinder, which involved working overnight to get the plane back together, followed by some days lost to flight tests and other steps necessary to get the plane back in service. Following that, the Associated Press sent a small team to follow us around for two weeks, working on a short documentary. While it is fantastic for our mission and spreading the word, it turned out to be an incredible amount of work to mix glacier photography around the film shoot.

The season ended with an increasing crescendo. The weather improved somewhat in August, allowing for an almost crazed schedule of flying and photography, culminating in one last 8 hour flying day with nearly 4,000 photographs taken. Then it was time to point the nose south and drop off the plane in the Netherlands, for some scheduled airframe upgrades.

Next year it will be somewhere north of the Arctic Circle, to get the rest of the glaciers of Continental Scandinavia.

What are some observations?

• The glaciers here are more likely to cover the top of a mountain ridge, in a dome-like fashion, with smaller outlets. The Alps are more likely to be the opposite, with a steep, pronounced summit and the glaciers running down the sides, possibly accumulating below in a flatter area, followed by a longer outlet.
• Recession is not as clearly evident here as the Alps. The Alps are almost painful as they leave evidence of the 1860 maxima behind, showing some glaciers already gone, or nearly gone. The glaciers of Norway sometimes didn’t show outlet recession until a few decades ago, owing to different mechanics of moisture, elevation, and temperature. With smaller outlets, glacial loss is not as easy to spot. It is presumed great losses of ice would show a reduced summit dome, though that requires comparative photography to observe.
• Evidence from the air shows sometimes repeated glacial maxima at various outlets, compared to a clear 1860 maxima in the Alps.
• Proximity to the ocean is a big part of the story. Jostedalsbreen, the largest glacier in Continental Europe, is not far from Jotunheimen, the national park with the highest peaks north of the Tatras in Europe. Jostedalsbreen is at between 1600 and 2000 meters, whereas glaciers in Jotunheimen are found usually between 1800 and 2300 meters, and are significantly smaller. Jostedalsbreen is much closer to the Atlantic than Jotunheimen. Further Ålfotbreen, even closer to the water, has its glaciers at 1200-1500 meters, indicating astronomical snowfall in winter as a reason behind the existence of the glacier.