Lina Rodriguez, a partner with SEI in the Adaptation at Altitude program, reflects on the power of glaciers, contemplating one that she missed and one that she experienced. Her perspective is part of an occasional series by the Adaptation at Altitude program to mark the UN’s designation of 2025 as the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation.
I was born in the mountains, at 2,640 meters above sea level. In Bogota, Colombia – the city where the eastern hills (cerros orientales in Spanish) serve as a compass in a capital of more than 8 million inhabitants. Despite its elevation, Bogota is not surrounded by snow-capped peaks. So, in my daily life the image of white ice- and snow-peaked mountains was not common, even though I knew it existed and lay in the country’s highest mountains.
This has changed.
In recent decades, Colombia has lost approximately 90% of its glacier coverage. Today, only six glaciers remain. All of these surviving glaciers are in the region’s highest reaches, at least 4,900 meters above sea level.
I left my country when I was 18, having never approached a mass of ice that required wearing crampons and adapting to the altitude to step on it and hear the crunch of my footsteps as I walked across it.
It was six years later and, in another country – Switzerland – when I finally experienced something like it. For the first time, with my boots gripped firmly onto crampons, I secured my body to a rope that guided me and my friends single file up a mountain.
There, I watched the sunrise emerge from behind the whiteness of the Allalin Glacier. I remember that landscape vividly – the vastness of the ice, the sound of the wind, and the roughness of a surface that seemed to stretch infinitely toward the horizon.
A friend leads the author up the Allalin Glacier.
Photo: Lina Rodriguez
A year later, in Bolivia, I approached another glacier, or rather, the trace it had left behind. The Chacaltaya Glacier, at 5,421 meters above sea level and just 30 kilometres from La Paz, once hosted the highest ski station on the planet. In 1998, experts who had studied the glacier for many years predicted that it would last until 2015. Events overtook their prediction. By 2009 it had almost completely disappeared.
Today one walks over a mass of exposed rocks, among the remnants of the abandoned ski infrastructure. The deserted hut of the Bolivian Andean Club, holds the memories of those who slid down the Chacaltaya’s snow-covered slopes on wooden skis or sleds. There, on the rocky surface left behind, one breathes in the nostalgia of what climate change took away. Pedro, my friend and mountain guide, told me between sighs about his childhood among snowfalls and tourists who, like him, felt the thrill of skiing at the highest station on Earth.
The Bolivian Andean Club hut, as shown in 2019, has been abandoned. It was once a hub for snow activities at the Chacaltaya Glacier in Bolivia.
Photo: Lina Rodriguez.
I often think about how fortunate I have been to encounter glaciers at all, to see their textures, hear their sounds, and feel the quiet power they hold. These great bodies of ice remind us of a scale of time far beyond our own lives. Perhaps that is why I always encourage others to witness a glacier in person if possible. Not out of urgency alone, but out of the belief that meeting one, even once, changes the way we understand the planet. Glaciers leave an imprint – of awe, of humility, and of responsibility – that stays with us long after we have left them behind.
Lina Rodriguez at sunrise at the Allalin Glacier in Switzerland in 2018.
Photo: Lina Rodriguez
Lina Rodriguez is a PhD student at the University of Geneva and researcher at Global Mountain Safeguard Research (GLOMOS), a collaborative program and scientific alliance between the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) and Eurac Research based in Bolzano, Italy.
Her work combines Indigenous and local knowledge with climate science to improve how communities understand, trust and apply climate information in their decision-making.
Program / The Adaptation at Altitude program seeks to help mountain communities adapt to climate change.
Feature / SEI and partners created a climate village at a historic arts festival in Hungary to bring youth views and artistic expression into climate policy discussions.
Event on 18 May – 21 May in Cavtat / Luke Gooding will present a new paper which focuses on scaling participatory retrofit across diverse housing stocks.
Perspective / This perspective argues for a systemic approach by integrating mitigation and adaptation by default into every policy, budget and planning decision.
