Large-scale melting was just getting going then now, for the first time in recent history, every glacier in the world is in full retreat. In the Himalayas, we toured for weeks through exotic snowscapes, stopping on the summit of the 16,000-foot headwaters of the Yamunotri River-to witness the first trickles of meltwater that would soon become the Ganges largest tributary.

I remember seeing a column of steam shooting up from the Amazon Rainforest on the northeastern flank of a 15,000-foot Bolivian peak that we skied a first descent on. We skied madly in the dark months-there wasn’t much else to do-and I went on to climb and ski icy peaks on five continents over the next two decades. I grew up in ice and snow in northern Maine, where ice fisherman parked their cars on frozen lakes in the winter and you could walk across fjords and bays from Christmas to Easter. To envision just how much ice the planet has lost, and how it is indelibly altering our planet, consider this: melt on the poles in just the past few decades has changed the planet’s rotational axis.

Empire at war phoenix rising