Category : Montagne
The clouds pass and spread their shadows. They are set ablaze with the peaks in the light of a late afternoon.
Massif du Soreiller. Ecrins National Park. August 2020.
Last September, last week before the weather got fickle.
The blue hour in the Ecrins. Everything is very quiet. Only the murmur of the torrents coming down from the valleys below breaks the silence.
In the warm glow of the rising sun. Ecrins National Park.
After making the comparison last year with the Quirlies glacier 5 years apart, I thought I could do the same with the Arsine glacier this year for the 10 years of my first bivouac in the area.
So here is the Before / After of the Lake and the Arsine Glacier at 10 years, 1 day, 1 hour, 14 minutes and 45 seconds. Si, si!
Well, I tried to find the same pebbles in the foreground but, as I naively thought that pebbles were inert things, it’s not that simple. In 10 years they’ve had time to move! Having said that, if you look carefully towards the centre of the picture, there are some who have remained faithful to the position.
Unsurprisingly, some of the ice has gone. I remembered very well the large wall of ice that almost threw into the water at the bottom of the lake. When I arrived, I immediately saw that it had shrunk. If you compare the photos, you can see that it has almost disappeared. It was as if bulldozers had come and bulldozed the land in anticipation of some infamous construction.
Since most of the glacier is covered with rocks, we don’t notice too many other differences. There’s still a big hole in the ice where a stream of water comes out that didn’t exist 10 years ago. The upper part, where the white snow is visible, doesn’t seem to have changed much. The patches of snow perched in the mountain are more important this year. The melting was obviously more advanced in July 2010 than this year since we haven’t really had a lot of heat yet. But don’t worry, the heat wave is coming. It’s just a bit late this year.
We are between 1700 and 3500m above sea level and there is very little snow. It is mild. The landscape is very textured between the roughness of the rock and the snow clinging to it desperately.
Aiguille du Plat de la Selle. Ecrins National Park.
Saturday afternoon I went to see the first snows above Allemond. Wintery atmosphere at the top where I got a little frozen feet to enjoy the shades of the sunset.
Finally, it’s not that bad, this lake!
It is surrounded by rocks except the north shore which is trampled by cows. Interesting points of view are not easy to find.