The Rettenbachferner Glacier in Sölden is melting.
And it is melting fast.
'Rettenbachferner melted by 127 metres'
In the Glacier Report from the Austrian Alpine Club (Österreichs Alpenverein) the Rettenbach glacier is the second fastest melting glacier in Tirol. In their most recent report it recorded a loss of 127 m in one year.
I have been watching it melt only for 15 years and in the last years it has become a strong motiv in my art. It is this glacier that started me on my journey of painting glaciers. As the melting accelerated I have been watching the Rettenbachferner change...
The ice retreats and exposes more rocks, changing the way it looks and how we ski it.
Each winter the ice looks different, and each year the melt changes the glaciers face and structure.
Such a nostalgic beauty as it retreats and fades away.
Glaciers are not just aesthetically beautiful they are an important water source.
And the strangeness of Time changes perceptions, where once the glacier water caused fear and danger from flooding, it now retreats, as they disappear
Below are some photos of mine and from the internet of Rettenbachferner over the years...
The glacier road and the first lifts were built from 1975 onwards.
'A man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel tolerably insignificant by and by.'
Mark Twain
GLACIERS
'Down comes the snow, sometimes a drifting of tiny flakes, sometimes a swirling of flakes so thick that the sky is a sheet of blinding white. It is so cold that when the sky clears the snow does not melt. Year after year each heavy snow piles upon the one before it.
As the temperature varies slightly, the snowflakes change into ice crystals. Some of the surface snow melts, and the water seeps down into the mass of ice crystals, squeezing out a part of the trapped air. The weight of the layers of ice crystals squeezes out more air. The crystals are packed into a solid field of ice, which is known as an ice field. The weight of the new snow on top adds to the weight of the ice.
This mass grows heavier as it grows thicker. It presses downward with such force that this field of ice begins to move. Grinding and scraping the surface of the ground below, it slowly spreads outward. It rips boulders from the bedrock and drags them along. It carves its way through the mountain peaks. It moves outward and downward, flowing across the land.
It has become a glacier.'
GLACIERS/natures frozen rivers, Hershall H Nixon and Joan Lowery Nixen, P. 11, 1980/ Dodd, Mead & Company, New York.
I
I Definitely see the world through a romantic lense, I am deeply connected to nature and all that I see and experience there. I feel most alive immersed in nature than anywhere else on earth.
My glacier series is my response to the beauty and the change.
I am documenting glaciers as they are retreating/dying. Holding a moment in time and keeping it as it was.
I am sad to see this glacier change so much in the short time I have been here, and for the locals that are connected to their glaciers would have seen huge changes over the years.
Rettenbachferner is found in Ötztal, Tirol Austria.
If you are interested in owning a glacier artwork there are some smaller glacier series artworks available HERE
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