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The Extreme Sport of Ice Climbing Is at Risk of Extinction
The winter sport is becoming more treacherous as the world warms and icefalls become less and less stable.
It is a skillful, tough, physical endeavor—a meticulous, cyclical dance of hacking axes and kicking crampons into the ice, finding stability, and then pushing and reaching for new fastenings higher up. Scientists warn that alpine regions are warming exceptionally fast compared to the global average temperature, which continues to march upwards. There’s almost no research on ice-climbing environments, and the freezing of mountain streams and waterfalls receives little attention in the latest IPCC report on the world’s ice- and snow-covered regions.
Or read this on Wired
