Pyrenees

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.

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