Racing to Photograph Glaciers Before They’re Gone

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Turning to climate now as an unseasonably warm winter shatters records in Europe, forcing many ski resorts to close. France, Spain, Ireland, and the U.K. declared 2022 their hottest year ever. While temperatures this new year are already several degrees higher than usual. Garrett Fisher calls himself an ordinary guy who has been flying around in a tiny plane, photographing glaciers in these regions which are melting beyond recognition. And he’s joining Hari Sreenivasan to discuss this perilous journey.

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HARI SREENIVASAN, CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, thanks. Garrett Fisher, thanks for joining us. So, you’ve got this initiative to try to take a photograph of all these different glaciers. Tell me, what is the urgency here?

GARRETT FISHER, FOUNDER, GLOBAL GLACIER INITIATIVE: Well, the urgency is the melt rate is absolutely astonishing in some of these temperate areas. For example, in the Alps, it is — the heating is taking place two times normal rate in other parts of the world. And in many instances, the glaciers are already gone in some aspects. It’s larger ones that remain.

SREENIVASAN: So, how are you documenting this? Because it’s hard for people to see a glacier receding or melting or just not coming back at the same rates year after year?

FISHER: So, the method is using old aircraft, the two-seater aircraft, these are what I grew up flying. They fly slowly with a good lift ratio. So, they have a high ceiling. They can go up to about 17,000 feet. They can fly slowly to get and intimately. And the mission is — it’s separate from a scientific one. So, science has all of the data we need. There’s orthographically corrected two-dimensional satellite images, we have lidar and radar imagery, some aspects from the old space shuttle missions. Those are not beautiful. They are data oriented, which tell us everything we need to know about the glacial recession. What I’m trying do to with the aircraft is get as close as I can in a personable way to recreate the glacial experience that we will be losing for future generations.

SREENIVASAN: How do you express what it’s like to stand in front of a glacier to people who never have?

FISHER: Well, in my case, I am flying. But the — it’s — I say it’s transcendental, spiritually elevating. I’m kind of quoting myself. It’s something I never tire of. I don’t ever get sick of it.

SREENIVASAN: Why?

FISHER: I could be having a flight where — you know, I’ve been doing this too long for the month, I’m wearing out, the weather has been a struggle. I’m eight hours into it for the day. And as I’m flying, I’m kind of, I don’t know about this today. And I get in and get to the glaciers and all of it just disappears. And I’m happily photographing. There’s just something about it that makes it three to five times more than just looking at a big mountain range.

SREENIVASAN: So, as you go about doing this, what struck you? I mean, this is happening on every continent that you’re going and trying to find. You’re not going to North Pole and the South Pole, but you’re going basically up — all the way to Norway, right?

FISHER: Yes. So, the — it varies a bit. So, the temperate regions are somewhat consistent, the high-altitude mountains are consistent, that also comes through with the scientific projections for glacial recession by the end of the century. So, Canadian Rockies, U.S. Rockies, Alps, you get about the same thing, 70 percent ice lost by the end of the century, if not all of it.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

FISHER: You know, our view is a little different, there is kind of feedback cycle with the precipitation increase briefly. So, there was some back and forth with the glaciers in Norway. And now, they seem to be retreating rate very, very rapidly. Norway has a different experience. It is semi polar. Very, very large plateau glaciers filling with small glaciers that are better spilling off. And it’s very evident the small ones are retreating extremely rapidly. However, there is an almost distracting large ice cap mass to look at.

SREENIVASAN: You also — I mean, right now, you are joining us from Switzerland. You’ve been photographing things on the European continent but you also took photographs in the United States, the Western Alps, if you will, and the Rockies. What did you see there?

FISHER: So, that started in 2015. And the Rockies are — they’re drier to begin with than the Alps and the European mountains. What I found was a lot of the — the evidence, of course is quite — when you look at a glacier and you might see so much of it remaining, the (INAUDIBLE) and the terminal legs are — it could two thirds of the glacier is already gone. So, we’ve lost much of what we already had from the 1860 maxima. And then, from the Glacier National Park, it’s pretty bleak what you see there. The — again, it’s — you might be looking at some of the old 1930s photos where they have an old card, a Model T, that drive up going up to the road. They’re frolicking at the glacier. Kind of enjoying themselves. And I’m looking down at it with the photo, and I don’t always see it in- flight. I’m grabbing the photo of what remains and I go home and look at the images, and it might be this much of the glacier remaining, but where back in the ’30s it was about this much. Looking down, that that’s where they were hiking right from the road.

SREENIVASAN: The European Environment Agency says that these glaciers have lost half of their mass since 1900 but the acceleration of that loss has gotten worse. Break that down for us. I mean, because it’s hard for us to imagine half of something gone or 5 percent of something gone. What is someone likely to experience if they went back to a glacier every year and, say, stood at the same spot?

FISHER: Well, everyone will jump back to 1900, and we can go all the way back 200 years ago, and you had stories in the Alps and even Norway where they’re concerned that the glacier is coming to destroy the village, it’s growing. So, the reverse problem. Now, our concern are disappearing. Back then, they’re looking — and now, of course, meeting the Alps, you have this glacier — you have a glacier up there and a village here. So, they’re terrified it’s coming. They used to have this sort of religious rituals to sort of try to cursed the glacier and to stop growing and whatnot. I didn’t understand it. So, there’s — the one that strikes me the most is in a painting I saw from Grindelwald, which Grindelwald is in — it’s a resort town. It is near Interlocken. And so, it’s very incredibly steep. It’s some of the most vertical relief you’ll find in the western world, particularly the populated western world. It goes up 8,000, 9,000 feet, practically vertical. And the glacier, now, it is quite far up. It’s still quite a stunning canyon that comes down. And you can clearly see the 1860 maxima that the marine (ph) went all the way down, almost to the farmland. So, that, to me, was always striking because you’re looking down saying, holy cow. Went all the way down there. And now, it’s up here, still striking, by the way, still pretty. However, you see this kind of scar mark, which tells you where it was. The painting shows the ice having spilled into what is the Grindelwald Village now, which is, to us, almost fundamentally unfathomable, this idea that you’re down at 3,000 feet, you know, this glacier coming from 12, all the way down to three, spilling to where probably Swiss cows with bells were mooing and eating grass right next it. That’s what life was like for them. And when we look now, that’s 80 to 90 percent lost. The bulk of it gone. And so, my takeaway, I think some people, when there’s — an alarmist projection, there is a short circuit that goes onto the mind. You kind of hear an alarmist thing and you say, well, that won’t happen or it’s so far down. We kind of short circuit. We say, you know, I can’t fathom that. What I see tells me that the short circuit is just in our head. I mean, ETH Zurich predicts by 2100 there could be only two glaciers in Switzerland, just to — and I believe it. From what I see, absolutely, that very much could happen.

SREENIVASAN: Wow. So, you know, in Alaska, I have heard and I’ve seen reports here that says it’s 60 times worse snow loss than in the 19th century. I mean, how do you keep up with a landscape that is changing so fast, even in, as you are saying, you kind of just went back to try to recapture something, and it’s already changed?

FISHER: Well, the only thing you could do is go as fast as possible, that creates the sense of urgency that I don’t want to single season lost. And also, I’d like to double the season by including the southern hemisphere which would introduce January to probably early April timeframe. That’s really what drives me is I do not want to have one single summer where I’m unprepared and I’m unable to catch something.

SREENIVASAN: When you said you have kind of a limited window, how many days does it take to photograph glaciers if, well, there could be snow coming back and winter could be starting in some of these high altitudes?

FISHER: So, it depends in the season. On average, in a high-altitude situation, about August 6th, the season opens up. It depends on this — the year in question. That runs, usually fairly safely, until about September 7th and then, that is dependent on first snow. So, if they delay, if first snows are very, very light, and then, we get — you get a gap. And then, usually around September 23rd to 30th, the season is over. There is a couple of variants. And so, this is what — I have lived with this in the U.S. Rockies, that was exceptionally true there, which is doubly hard with the wildfire smoke, fights with it, with visibility issues. The Alps was exactly the same. Norway is even a bit later. It pushes later into when the incoming storms in September come. What I understand though is Alaska has the options for glaciers terminating into the ocean are beginning to melt off in early summer. And then, the melting goes up to incredible altitudes. And that’s the area my next focus.

SREENIVASAN: So, how are you flying? What kind of aircraft? You said you are in a small aircraft?

FISHER: Yes. So, it started with — it is a Piper PA-11, which is called a Cub Special. It’s a two-seater from 1949 with a 100-horsepower carbonated engine. My grandfather rebuilt it in the ’90s, and that’s where I learned how to fly and got my license in the U.S. in the late ’90s. So, I started with that one. That’s the one I use Montana and Colorado and Wyoming. That one also was shipped to Europe, and I used that in the Alps. And then, I bought another aircraft in late 2021. And so, it’s big. It’s the next model. It’s the Piper PA-18 Super Cub. Again, two-seater. If the average person saw the two side by side, they’d might see a light pickup and a heavier pickup. They would kind of see the same thing. But what’s under the hood matters. The engine power is greater. The speed is a bit greater. Double the fuel. There is a number of factors. That’s the — the older airplane would’ve taken me a week just to get from Switzerland to Norway. And that’s why I got the newer one this because we can’t be taking that long just to get there. and the season in Norway reinforce, it was a very good purchase. It would have been impossible with the older one.

SREENIVASAN: So, in these tiny aircrafts, especially ones that were built in the ’40s, do you have heaters? I mean, if you’re flying in altitude, isn’t it cold?

FISHER: So, the older one does not have a viable heater at all. And that does get exceptionally cold at altitude, particularly in the Alps. Usually, the glacier start about 10,000 feet and they go to 15,000. So, I have — I learned in the beginning, you take off, and it’s 82 Fahrenheit, in a T- shirt and you are 15, 000 feet and it’s 25, and you have the window open at 90 miles an hour, that is perhaps the heater were (INAUDIBLE) gloves might be useful. The newer one have heat that works.

SREENIVASAN: So, how dangerous is this work that you’re doing?

FISHER: I don’t consider it all that dangerous. It depends on the perspective of who is asking the question. From an aviation standpoint, the — generally mountain flying is considered dangerous, it has a lot to do with — there’s just a lot of weather there. So, if you took any old hearty (ph) atmosphere, 12,000 feet, that’s fairly predictable. You insert mountains in there, you’re going to get more turbulence, you’re going to get more precipitation, and clouds and other things. I am not so much worried about that because I’ve been doing this in many, many mountain ranges. So, I’m a lot — I’m used to that. What concerns me is the single engine carbonated aircraft if the engine quits. Almost all aircrafts, except for the largest airliners, are gliding when they’re on final approach. So, their prospect of gliding is not a shocking idea. You have a range that — if the engine quits, the plane is going down in some area of the glide ratio. The thought is exactly what it’s going down over.

SREENIVASAN: When did you get interested in this?

FISHER: It started in the late ’90s, I was a teenager. I recall the conversation, driving with a friend, a rather intellectual teenager. He had mentioned one of the studies, it’s pivotal at the time, it was an update on the projections of the melting of Glacier National Park in Montana. And they predicted the loss of all glaciers by roughly 2030. And I have this visceral reaction, I had to see them before they were gone. Unacceptable, it was — I don’t know if it was an American heritage or national parks out west that, how can you have Glacier National Park without glaciers? But I had to see them. I’d never been out West. I’ve never been to Montana. I had never been to a glacier. But it was — that was the first indication that this was coming, even though it took a while to mature.

SREENIVASAN: Yes. So, as you go along documenting this, I mean, do you have a day job?

FISHER: Yes. So, I do effectively accounting and finance work, which I do it remotely. And that’s what pays for all of it. And that can be — it can be something of a challenge. It was quite interesting looking at the whole remote office packed up into the car going up to Norway, but that’s how we kept it all glued together.

SREENIVASAN: Is this about raising awareness? Is this about your kind of personal quest to see all of these beautiful things before they’re gone? I mean, what’s the kind of driving motivator for what makes you get into a plane and get up somewhere cold and take photographs?

FISHER: So, it — of course, it has a personal component. I mean, no one could do this kind of thing that long without liking it. I do love glaciers. I love looking at them. I don’t tire of them. And it is a convenient way to get to them, yes, that is true. The second thing that drives me as I’m thinking of future generations centuries down the line, between the natural cycle out of the ice age and the fact we’ve given it a good old boost with our decisions as society for the last hundred years, this chance of them coming back comes into the next ice age. We’re talking millennium, tens — or tens of thousands of years. So, this is something a few hundred years from now, as far as the temperate regions are concerned, other the poles, we’re experiencing something that won’t exist. And when I think of the work that goes into archaeological digs, where they’re just scraping at the slightest thing to read into, the carbon data, to read into the smallest thing of a culture that may not exist and we devote Ph.D. level efforts and funding to this effort, we are looking at that anthropological experience that we know will disappear. And that’s the second motivator, is to share this, because we know we have it and it’s going to disappear for 500 years from now, that we’ll not know what it looks like.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

FISHER: The third one, I’m a little pessimistic in the sense of — from an awareness standpoint, as science is projected in some ranges, such as the Alps, 40 percent of the ice would disappear if we went to carbon zero today. So, there’s a lag in the system. To me, it is improbable we will be able to turn it around fast enough to make a difference.

SREENIVASAN: So, how do you, how do you keep from being overwhelmed? I mean, that is a pretty dark prospect that you’re actually seeing firsthand much faster than the rest of us are. But if you’re looking out at what the scientific projections are, by the end of the century, a lot of the places that you’re flying to might be totally dry.

FISHER: Well, for my — to me, it is elevating as I do it. So, it’s — to me, there is a sadness when I see the evidence of their recessions. So, the ones that are — if I didn’t know glacier was there, I just see pretty mountains, and I find that interesting, by the way. We just see beautiful mountains. And the average person might not know there was a glacier that’s gone. So, when we don’t know that, we feel nothing. We say, OK. We take it for what it is. So, there is a side of that I feel both the sadness when I look at the clear evidence from the era that much of it may be gone. But then, there’s an awe when I’m immersed in the beauty of what is there. And that’s really — it provides energy to me to keep doing it. And as far the — I mean, it goes back to the aspect of the glaciers will still, at least, be around to extent before I’m old. So, I’d still have time. Though I got to go back to what I mentioned earlier that there’s — I don’t want miss one season.

SREENIVASAN: You know, last summer, more than 1,000 people died in the flooding that was in Pakistan, which put a huge proportion of that country underwater. And that was because of dramatic rainfall, which was also made worse by rapidly melting glaciers. I mean, what sort of lessons do you think we should be taking from events like what happened in Pakistan last year about the power of glacial melts and what they can do to existing populations?

FISHER: I think we have no choice but to adapt. We can hope for a policy change, but I think by the time there would be policy change that could get through to the economy and feedback into the climate cycle, it would be so long where we must adapt in the short-term to deal the changes that are happening at this phase.

SREENIVASAN: So, what is your hope for this project?

FISHER: So, the hope is to get all of them. That is the hope. Absolutely all of them. The big question mark is the Himalayas. And so, first of all, to get all of them, if I could conquer the Himalayas, we’ll see. There is a lot of political and geographic and altitude considerations there as well as expense. Of course, I would like these images and videos to survive past me, and actually be remembered and used. I’m thinking of PhDs to dig their old archives now of those who took similar images in the early 20th century and they’re digging through with great gusto, and that guy probably was struggling to pay for the trip, wondered who cared about these images. And 100 years later, they’re just digging through these jewels. I’m hoping that it all stays together, it’s digital format. So, somebody long when I’m long gone, finds the same thing and can share it.

SREENIVASAN: Garrett Fisher of the Global Glacier Initiative, thanks so for joining us.

FISHER: Thank you.