Opinion – É Logo Ali: Pedro Auck: ‘I am a living witness of climate change’

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On the Sunday (6) when COP27, the UN (United Nations) conference on climate change, began in Egypt, the blog spoke with São Paulo mountaineer Pedro Hauck, 41, a geographer with a doctorate in geology, who for 24 years dedicates to climbing by passion and profession. And he, who spoke from Kathmandu, after having climbed Ama Dablam, a Himalayan mountain with 6,812 meters of altitude considered one of the most beautiful on the planet, confirms what many climbers have been commenting for a long time in the message groups: there is less and less snow and greater risks in the high mountains.

“I started climbing in the late 1990s and am a living witness to the impacts and changes of climate change,” says Hauck. The example he considers most emblematic are the Andes Mountains, of which he has already climbed 58 of the 105 peaks above 6,000 meters in altitude.

“Before, in the climbing guides, you had pictures of areas covered in snow, theoretically perfect for climbing, but now you get there and see that they are totally out of date, there is no such coverage anymore”, he explains. “In the eastern region of Bolivia, for example, where the Cordillera Real is located and which, because it is close to the Amazon, is more humid, penitents are beginning to appear. [formações de gelo que podem chegar a mais de um metro e podem comprometer a escalada] that previously only existed in drier areas”, he adds.

The problem with the increasing lack of snow in the high mountains, especially in the Andes, continues Auck, “is that it is a region of very fractured rock, where the ice acts as a cement that holds the surface together.” If this ice melts too much with higher and higher temperatures, “the risk of rock avalanche is very great and increasingly frequent”.

“Before, we only saw penitents forming at the end of the climbing season, around September,” he says, “but last year we saw them in July.”

In the Himalayas it is no different, with the aggravating factor that the higher mountains make rescue operations difficult. This year, just last October, a single avalanche killed 26 people who were just 4,880 meters above sea level, on the peak Draupadi ka Danda II, on the Indian side of the mountain range.

According to Auck, these drastic changes in climate that affect such sensitive regions have caused the profile of mountaineering to change. “Before, when I started, there was a lot of talk about technical climbing, everyone was looking for the most difficult, but today the greatest demand is for accumulating the number of summits, or adding so many mountains above so many thousand meters, or even reducing the climbing time of the higher mountains, but generally looking for the normal routes, where the risks are better known”, he says.

More risk, more demand: paradox against the clock

Auck usually goes on expeditions with his wife, also a mountaineer Maria Teresa Ubrich, who is the Brazilian who has climbed the most mountains above 6,000 meters — 28 of them in the Andes alone. They are partners of the Soul agency, which organizes expeditions to mountains all over the world, and which has registered an increasing demand for packages that include climbs that were previously restricted to a few initiates.

“Mountaining in Paraná, for example, where I live, began in 1879, when there was no soccer team in the state”, says Auck. “But for many years, until the creation of the Real Plan, with the stabilization of the economy and the currency, it was really a sport for few, the equipment was all imported, expensive, and difficult to find”.

“With it being easier to obtain good equipment that provides a minimum of comfort in the midst of the natural difficulties of climbing, the demand for the activity has increased a lot and there has been a natural evolution, in which the person starts climbing mountains right here, in Brazil, which are lower, and then he goes to Bolivia, Argentina, the Andes mountains, until one day he discovers that it’s not an otherworldly plan to go to the Himalayas”, he explains.

So, if the reader is thinking of venturing into high mountains, it’s best to start training right away. Because, depending on the direction of the climate in the coming years, it is possible and, unfortunately, probable, that the great escalations are in the process of extinction.

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