Mountains are formidable.

Akin to the deep sea, stepping onto a glacier is the conscious choice to enter into a world where I will always, with the utmost reverence, be a visitor. Land that remains eternally wild, foreign, and untamed. An alien environment where scale deceives and vastness permeates. Sheer forces of geological power, from the macro to the micro. They are a place of transience, reverence, and formidability.

For much of history, these higher regions encased in ice were impenetrable giants viewed from afar—geological gods—carving the weather of those who lived in the valleys either side. Silent, sacred giants whose occasional words came in the form of violent roars, cracks, and tremors, enshrined by a rich tapestry of legends and mythology. Mountains were, and still are, incredibly sacred places, enshrined by a rich tapestry of legends and, in more recent times, tales of ascension.

I found my passion for these white giants in the highlands of Peru's Cordillera Blanca, and whilst it is only recently I have begun to take an active interest in their cultural and mythological significance, climbing is somewhat an act of nomadic colonialism, and perhaps it is this transience of expeditions that often leaves it feeling divorced from the societies that sit next to these giants.

Yet their symbolism as a training ground for generations of mountaineers, and a pillar of climate change, is deeply entrenched in my mind. There is a sense of immense personal peace found in devoting oneself to the singular, somewhat meaninglessly meaningful, task of propelling one’s body and mind to the “top” of a large chunk of icy rock. The higher we move up a mountain, the further we must come back down—a goal that inherently places us further, not closer, to our destination. It is a stretching of limits and intrepidism that has captivated humans for centuries.

In my own brief encounters with these giant beasts, it is the moments of being completely engulfed in cloud that have stayed with me. There is an indefinable feeling about staring into these seemingly timeless and beautiful white voids of water, a pure white canvas perforated by relentless wind and stinging snow. Through my own glasses, it is a paradoxical combination of voidal claustrophobia, the pressure of nothingness. Yet in these moments, there is also a sense of surrender and trust, a sharp presence and tether to each movement. My mind feels akin to the blue sky above the cloud. In these moments I narrow in on my haggard breaths and sit with the dizziness and slight headache that materialises with each step upward. Every ounce of my being is focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Sometimes I’m met with my own fear, my own anxiety as my body and mind begin, albeit subtly, to shut down in the thinning air.

Chasing this feeling of meditative presence, climbing mountains has become a motivating force—a compass needle leading to incredibly remote ends of the earth.

But touching these icy giants and learning to climb in our era is like beginning a love affair with a dying breed in the epicentre of a massacre. The Cordillera Blanca, home to 90% of our planet’s tropical glaciers, has declined by nearly half—44% in glacial mass—in the past 49 years. Particularly sensitive to climate change due to their positioning near the equator, the tropical glaciers of Peru are not simply in retreat—they are past the point of recovery. And as such, to dance on top of them without understanding the fragility of these seemingly impregnable icy fortresses feels like turning a cheek to the saddening reality that our planet as we know it is in a state of severe distress. Every summit is a little melancholic for me. To recall the sea of white-capped peaks and recognise there’s a good chance I may outlive them is a horror.

In the case of the Cordillera Blanca, consequences of such a loss are devastating—not only as a climate thermostat for the cryosphere of the Peruvian Andes, but as a critical water source for over 7 million humans. The capital city of Peru, Lima, depends on the Andean sources for 80% of its water.

Akin to my own, these giants are struggling to breathe. A well-worn mountain saying is “mountaineering is the art of suffering” — perhaps thus, we know, and can use this, to feel the suffering of the ground underneath us.

This personal obsession, a kind of falling in love and finding place and peace within the natural world, is something all of us need to cultivate to give us the personal motivation to directly act, in the rest of our lives, to conserve these sacred places. I truly believe we need to connect, to understand what is being lost. Understanding the incredible gifts we are taking away from those who come after us.