Planet Ice Part 3: Kilimanjaro’s Vanishing Summit Glacier

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GreatOutdoors.com has posted an update to their Planet Ice Project page, this time with a look at the vanishing ice on Kilimanjaro.

You may recall that the Planet Ice Project is the brain child of writer and photographer James Martin, who is traveling to various places around the globe over the next two years, to check the health of glaciers and polar ice caps. He hopes to write a book and photo essay on the impact of global warming on some of these iconic ice fields.

In the case of Kili, there are some estimates that the famed “Snows of Kilimanjaro” may completely be gone by 2015. While I was there, some of the long time guides talked about how far the glacier use to reach down the mountain, and while it still appears to have a heavy snow cap, it is retreating at an alarming rate. If you want to see snow on the top of Kilimanjaro, you may want to schedule that visit sooner than later.

Kraig Becker

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