This story was originally published on Atlas Obscura.
In 1986, at the age of 21, Alejandra Melfo moved to Venezuela to study physics at the University of the Andes. She looked out at the horizon at the Sierra Nevada de Mérida, which was covered in snow and glaciers. She fell in love with her after arriving from a country with no mountain ranges.
Melfo saw the landscape change over time. The glaciers that could be seen from the city were rapidly retreating. The ice was splintered into smaller chunks by large cracks. The rock beneath the collapsed sections of the glaciers was exposed. Pico La Concha lost all of its glaciers by 1990. Pico Bolivar was the highest peak in Venezuela in the year of 2017). The second highest peak in Venezuela is Pico Humboldt.
Melfo, a particle physicist at the University of the Andes, has recently been working on projects involving biology and ecology, including research on the last glacier.
The shade of its own peak has sheltered the glacier from the elements. The glacier covered over a square mile in 1910. The glacier has shrunk to less than 0.02 square miles, or about the size of a soccer stadium, according to the last measurement in 2019. Venezuela may become the first country in the world to lose all of its glaciers if the glacier disappears.
Climate intervention would not slow or stop it in time. Venezuela's tropical glaciers are sensitive to climate change because they are already exposed to warm temperatures. The last one will be gone by the end of the decade. The glacier retreat is not possible, according to a quaternary geologist at the University of Minnesota.
A group of scientists based in Venezuela are looking for a rare opportunity. These glaciers have existed for hundreds of thousands of years, and now the peaks they once blanketed are likely to remain uncovered by permanent snow and ice for thousands more. Melfo says that this transition provides a unique window into how life emerges in essentially lifeless terrains.
When these things change from one status to the next, we are witnessing it. She says this is very special. You can see things happening at the geological scale.
The scientific work began with a series of steep hikes. Melfo and his team made three trips to Pico Humboldt in 2019. It took the team two to three days to arrive at the base of Pico Humboldt, with plenty of equipment to carry and no experience with such conditions.
