I CLIMBED the last few rocky steps up to the plateau by the Refuge des Oulettes de Gaube and inhaled views of the north face of Vignemale. At 3298m it is the highest mountain in the French Pyrenees, and it was the first time I had walked right up to a glacier… albeit a very diminished one. I pitched my tent below the ice and cooked dinner listening to the glacier creak and groan. As the evening drew in, I swapped my t-shirt for a long-sleeved shirt. That was as cold as it got.
The climate is changing. I know this from my day job as a climate change consultant and from the decades of research by scientists. But it’s one thing to know it from behind a desk and a computer screen, and another thing to have it thrust in your face in the mountains. In August and September 2022, I walked solo on the GR10 through the French Pyrenees from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean and found the climate in flux.
MELTING ON THE CLIMBS
In the Basque country and the High Pyrenees, I walked for weeks in temperatures of up to 35°C, at altitude. It felt like walking in an oven with
