Travel: 80% of Glaciers in Europe gone

I Thought This Was a WW1 Bunker on Marmolada… I Was Completely Wrong

Visiting Marmolada back in 2010, there was a dark cave high above the glacier. Was this part of the WW1 tunnels carved into the mountain?

This cave is actually the oldest bivouac in the Dolomites, carved out in 1875, long before the war. It was used by early alpinists as a base for reaching Punta Penia, at a time when there were no modern huts.

What’s shocking it to see why it sits so high up in such and inaccessible location on the cliffside.

The cave is now around 80 meters above the glacier!!! When it was built, it was at the same level as the ice, you could simply walk into it. Today, reaching it requires technical climbing, and even experienced alpinists don't often visit it.

It is a striking and very real example of glacier retreat on Marmolada, and one of the most powerful visual reminders seen in the Dolomites on how human cause climate change, or global warming has effected these destinations.

Check out this image from the early 1900’s where the snow was already 2 meters lower but still looked somewhat accessible.

 

This explains why the cave is already above the ice, so the photo seems to be taken a few decades later. That photo is incredible. It really confirms the measurements. Digging into the glaciological data for the full report on this site, it’s wild to see that the glacier has lost over 80% of its volume since that bivouac was built in 1875.

There’s a full report about it in the Mountain and a video by an Italian guide who visited the cave. The guide who created video was reading a book, visible in the video, check it out at 0:57.