On a picture from 1981, it is rolling down the mountain, wide and bulging, forming an ice cave at its end. But there is no need to go back so far to observe the glacier's decline. Like in an 1895 photo, where the glacier came as far as the former Tuckett Hut, located at 2,400 meters above sea level, and unfolded much lower. Of course, the oldest photographs best tell the story of the glacier's lost grandeur. PABLO CHIGNARD FOR 'LE MONDE' Thierry Maillet, heritage expert for the Ecrins national park, shows a 1983 photo of the Glacier Blanc taken at exactly the same place, in the direction of the mountain refuge on July 26. PABLO CHIGNARD FOR 'LE MONDE' Thierry Maillet, heritage expert in the Ecrins national park, shows a photo dating from 1895 of the Glacier Blanc and the old mountain refuge, on July 26. Thierry Maillet, heritage expert in the Ecrins national park, shows the Glacier Noir, of which a part is covered by stones, in the Hautes-Alpes on July 26. It's a close-up of the turmoil caused by climate change in this high mountainous region that straddles the Hautes-Alpes and the Isère. Historical photos testify to the dramatic acceleration of the 4,012-meter-tall glacier's decline and its exceptional rate of melting since the spring. It is rather the cruel comparison with photos from the past – vestiges of a time, not so long ago, when the largest glacier in both the Massif des Ecrins and the whole of the Southern Alps was there to see in all its splendor. The hardest thing to see is perhaps not the view of the front of the Glacier Blanc, where its gray edges flow in torrents under a blazing July sun. The Massif is particularly vulnerable to climate change – half of its glaciers have already disappeared. The Glacier Blanc in France's southern Alps, a giant on borrowed time By Audrey Garric Published on Augat 05h30įeatureThe largest giant of the Southern Alps, which reaches 4,012 meters, is bearing the brunt of this year's drought and exceptional heat waves.

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