Published July 17, 2012 Our crampons crunch into the ice and the
wind whips the tepid drizzle into our faces. High on the glacial
flanks of Antisana, Ecuador’s fourth highest summit, the signs
of climate change are unmistakable. Ignacio Espinosa, one of the
South American country’s top mountain guides, tells me that
previously, it rarely rained here above 4,500 meters (14,764
feet). Now, snow usually only falls above 5,000 meters (16,404
feet), he says. "It breaks my heart to see the way these
mountains are changing,” he adds. As he speaks, storm clouds
loaded with water vapor from the Amazon gather around us,
threatening to make our tour of Antisana a miserable experience.
Helmets on, ice axes in hand and roped together to manage the
risk of falling into a crevasse, we wind our way up the
mountain’s main glacier. As we approach 16,000 feet, a huge
rock-field and alpine lake come into full view below us. It is a
breathtaking, deeply troubling sight. Just a decade ago, the
whole area — at a guess, the size of