'It made me cry': climate crisis laid bare by return to glacier

A tourist has posted "staggering" pictures of himself and his wife at the same spot in the Swiss Alps almost exactly 15 years apart, in a pair of photos that highlight the speed with which global heating is melting glaciers.

- Ajit Niranjan

Duncan Porter, a software developer from Bristol, posted photos taken at the Rhône glacier in August 2009 and August 2024. The white ice that filled the background has shrunk to reveal grey rock. A once-small pool at the bottom, out of sight in the original, has turned into a vast green lake.

"Not gonna lie, it made me cry," Porter said in a viral post on X on Sunday night.

Porter and his wife, Helen, had taken the original photo from a viewpoint beside the Hotel Belvédère, perched on the side of a mountain road that once enjoyed magnificent views of the glacier.

The couple hung the original photograph up in their kitchen. This year, eager to return to the mountains and let their teenage daughters Maisie and Emily see the glacier, they took a camper van trip across Europe and set out to recreate the picture.

But when they got to the spot on the mountain road where they had taken the original picture, they found the hotel closed and the glacier drastically reduced.