How climate change transformed the world’s highest ski resort into a ghost town

For seven or eight months in a year, folks would glide on the icy mountains with sleds or skis, Kittelson told the BBC.

People walk on a glacier in the Cordillera Real of the Andes mountains on the outskirts of La Paz, Bolivia, Sunday June 12, 2011. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)

“This all was absolutely white. You could see tourists and also Bolivians skiing here,” Moises Mullisaca, a former worker at the Chacaltaya ski resort, told Ruptly in Spanish.

But what was once the world’s highest-altitude ski resort is now a ghost town. The snowy slopes in the Bolivian Andes melted after climate change took its toll.

This Oct. 8, 2018 photo, shows the entrance to the Chacaltaya atmospheric observatory, at Chacaltaya mountain, Bolivia. The station is an important place to collect data samples partly due to its location on the remnants of a glacier. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)

Bolivian scientists began studying the Chacaltaya glacier in the 1990s. Over the years, the level of snow on the 17,785-foot ski resort dwindled. They predicted the glacier would only survive through 2015 due to climate change, the BBC reported.

But the scientists overestimated. In 2009, the glacier, which was estimated to be 18,000 years old, was gone. A study by the Stockholm Environment Institute suggested that the region’s temperature increased by half a degree centigrade from 1926 to 2006.

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Brothers Adolfo and Samuel Mendoza, who worked at the resort for 70 years, watched the glacier disappear before their eyes, according to a 2016 BBC report.

“It’s extremely sad to see it this way. We warned people about this in the eighties, but nobody listened to us. Every year we could see it getting worse,” Samuel told the BBC.

A man walks with a chunk of snow in his hand along the Cordillera Real of the Andes mountains on the outskirts of La Paz, Bolivia, Sunday, June 12, 2011. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)

Adolfo cited the toxic fumes emitted by the diesel vehicles in the nearby capital city La Paz but added that Bolivia is not an industrial country. Chacaltaya is seeing the impacts of the rest of the planet, he said.

When it does snow, Adolfo described it as a “greasy black substance, full of filthy grit.” With everyone staying home during the pandemic, the year has brought some snow, as if it “recovered,” Mullisaca added.

As the glaciers melted, water supplies became scarce. Water rationing has become the norm in La Paz, where residents line up for hours to fill pots, pans and plastic bags with water, according to the BBC.

Protesters hold signs that read in Spanish “Climate Change,” “Action Now!,” and “Remember Copenhagen” as they demonstrate on Glacier Chacaltaya in the Andes mountains in Bolivia, Saturday, Oct. 24, 2009. Glacier Chacaltaya was famous for being the world’s highest ski run, but since the mid-90s has not had enough snow for skiing. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)

“The water is drying up, the water wells are drying up. There is no water anymore,” Norberta Choquehuanca, an indigenous resident in the area, told Ruptly in Spanish. “That’s why I, who live off these cattle, find it very difficult to find drinking water.”

Aleah Taboclaon traveled to Bolivia in 2015, and included a stop at the ski resort in her itinerary. The tip of the Chacaltaya mountains offers one of the best views in the country, Tabocloan told Insider.

When she visited, Taboclaon’s tour bus dropped her off at the bottom of the mountain where the abandoned ski resort sits, she told Insider. Visitors could step inside, but the only thing left was a toilet, she said. There were patches of snow on the mountain here and there, but not nearly enough to ski.

“All the glory of the ski resort is gone and will never return,” Taboclaon told Insider.

In this Oct. 8, 2018 photo, an air collector of the Chacaltaya atmospheric observatory stands in the outskirts of El Alto, Bolivia. In 2012, the site became an atmospheric station used to measure greenhouse gases, reactive gases and particles that can spread all the way to the Pacific Ocean hundreds of miles away. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)

Taboclaon hiked up the mountain, running into abandoned pieces of weather equipment on the way up. Among them was a glass pyramid that was once used to track the weather on the mountain, according to the High Altitude Pathology Institute.

Taboclaon, who runs a travel blog, told Insider that she felt sentimental at the end of her visit. Her journey to Chacaltaya solidified the climate crisis, she said.

“It seems that the frost does not come strong anymore, the temperatures are rising,” Choquehuanca told Ruptly in Spanish. “There will be no more snowfall, everything will melt.”