Hot and dry in the Alps: ice and water are already as scarce as in August. "Worse than 2022."

The specter of the scorching summer of 2022 , of the endless high-altitude Alpine furnace, with glaciers reduced to their limits, still looms: the June heat wave has left its mark on the Alps, where snow is already scarce, affecting the glaciers themselves and the refuges that depend on them. The report comes from the French Alps, where the level of residual snow and ice and the availability of water, at the end of the first ten days of July, is already what is normally expected in late July-early August.

The desolation of the Ecrins

"Everything has dried up," Noémie Dagan, caretaker of the Selle refuge, told Agence France Presse. The refuge is located at 2,673 meters above sea level in the Ecrins, a large mineral massif nestled between the Isère and Hautes-Alpes regions, dominated by two majestic peaks over 4,000 meters. From an Italian's perspective, it overlooks the national park of the same name, west of Briançon and south-southwest of the Lautaret and Galibier Alpine passes, beyond Montgenèvre and Fréjus. The snowfield that usually supplies water to her 60-person refuge already looks "a bit like what we should have in late July, early August. We're almost a month ahead of the snowmelt," Dagan confirms.

Without a cistern, the refuge operates just-in-time. If the water runs out, it must close: it already happened once in mid-August 2023. The refuge manager hopes to reach the end of the month this year with the other two catchment areas, including an "emergency" one: a kilometer of plastic pipe installed at the cost of considerable human effort to collect water from a glacier near the Pic de la Grave. But the steep and unstable slopes on which the pipe was laid are vulnerable to the "increasingly violent" storms that are devastating the mountain range.

The paradox of dry shelters

The Dauphiné Tourism Society, a local alpine club that owns the refuge, is evaluating more sustainable solutions, but lacks the necessary resources, he emphasizes. Having practiced his profession for about fifteen years, Dagan says he has seen "the glaciers and the high mountains undergo a transformation." At the same time, "the glaciers are our water reserves (...). I believe we are truly a kind of sentinel who has a vision of future impacts," he emphasizes.

Thomas Boillot, a mountain guide and longtime visitor to the Ecrins, never thought he'd see water problems in the refuges: "It had never occurred to us," he says. Yet, the cases are increasing, "and there will certainly be more," he says. Some snowfields, once thought to be eternal, are melting in the summer, precipitation is becoming scarce, and glaciers are changing shape as they melt, disrupting the refuges' water supply. Where water once flowed "by gravity" thanks to snow and ice reserves upstream, in the future it will have to be pumped from below.

Problems in Switzerland too

Scientists estimate that climate change is almost twice as significant in the Alps as global climate change, and that in France, for example, there will be almost no glaciers left by 2100.

2025 also promises to be risky for Switzerland's 1,400 glaciers , where accumulated snow and ice have melted five to six weeks earlier than usual, according to authorities. Xavier Cailhol, a doctoral student in environmental sciences and a mountain guide, has just returned from the Mont Blanc massif, where he also witnessed the "brutal" impact of the heat wave. "I started June skiing on Mont Blanc in 40 cm of fresh snow. And I finished it on completely exposed glaciers, all the way up to the Aiguille du Midi, up to 3,700 m above sea level," he says, noting that the layer of snow protects the ice by reflecting the sun's rays. "Above 3,200 meters, the climate is drier than we've ever seen in 2022," the researcher concludes. "So yes, it's quite worrying for the rest of the summer."

Cailhol cites as evidence the accelerated melting of the Bossons Glacier, a gigantic tongue that dominates the valley before entering Chamonix. "It all started with the appearance of a rocky expanse, which has now become a huge stone eye, and which is further accelerating the melting in that area," due to its dark color, which absorbs more heat.

The desolation of Mont Blanc from Chamonix

Unlike the Mer de Glace glacier, another symbol of a world in danger, which is part of the Mont Blanc massif but is not immediately visible from Chamonix or the main road, the Bossons glacier is clearly visible from the center of the historic “capital of French high mountains,” and its melting makes it "necessarily" an emblem of what is happening on other glaciers.