A glacier baby is born: Mating glaciers to replace water lost to climate change

A view of the Pakistani territory of Baltistan from the heights of the mountain above the village of Chunda. The patches of white in the foreground are snow and water. The patches of silver in the distance are clouds that shroud the peaks of most mountains in Baltistan. The territory boasts towering peaks, including K2, the world's second highest mountain. Diaa Hadid/NPR hide caption

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A view of the Pakistani territory of Baltistan from the heights of the mountain above the village of Chunda. The patches of white in the foreground are snow and water. The patches of silver in the distance are clouds that shroud the peaks of most mountains in Baltistan. The territory boasts towering peaks, including K2, the world's second highest mountain.

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CHUNDA, Pakistan – A farmer and a village leader in Pakistan's highlands decided it was time to try to make a glacier baby.

This ancient ritual that calls for mixing chunks of white glaciers, which residents believe are female, and black or brown glaciers (whose color comes from rock debris), which residents believe are male.

Folks believe that combining the chunks will spark the creation of a newborn glacier that will ultimately grow big enough to serve as a water source for farmers.

The ritual faded decades ago as modernity came to Baltistan. But it's getting a second look as human-induced planetary warming upends life here, according to residents, local authorities and scientists at , the chief intergovernmental body that studies climate change in Asia's high mountains.

" because it holds the world's largest volume of ice outside of the polar regions.

that collapse, sending ice and boulders down mountains, lands, roads and homes. There are more avalanches than before, says , the head of emergency management for the Agha Khan Agency for Habitat, a nonprofit that closely monitors impacts of climate change in the area. Even as devastating floods become more common, snowfall has decreased, meaning less spring snowmelt for waterways ranging from Machulo's mountain stream to the wild river.

School children head home near the village of Machulo, where the changing climate has meant more flooding, less snowfall — and less spring snowmelt to feed local waterways. Diaa Hadid/NPR hide caption

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School children head home near the village of Machulo, where the changing climate has meant more flooding, less snowfall — and less spring snowmelt to feed local waterways.

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Some 80,000 residents live in areas already considered too dangerous for habitation because of the impacts of climate change, says Karim. One of those residents is Sheherbano Rajput, a 25-year-old woman who lives near Bad Swat, a village wedged between a river and the steep inclines of the Hindu Kush. Last year, rains flooded their lands and triggered landslides that smashed through their village. Seven months pregnant and clutching her infant daughter, Rajput clawed through mud and rock to safety. Rajput says now she's scared whenever it rains. "I keep asking myself, when, when, when, will it happen again?"

All these impacts are expected to worsen, according to by. Even if humans can keep global warming to between 2.7 and 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100, Asia's high mountains are expected to loseof their ice mass by the end of the century. That ice mass is an important source for 10 major Asian river systems that provide water to some 1.9 billion people.

. "It's a question of addressing what we can," says , the resident representative for the UNDP, in Pakistan. He says the science behind the tradition of glacier mating is sound.

The glacial mating game

A mountain hydrologist who focuses on Asia's high mountains,, agrees. Locals retrieve ice from lower down the mountain, where it is melting, "and you take it further up" where it can't melt, he says.

"They put it into caves, where [the ice is] shaded from solar radiation," he says. "It's much colder. It's going to rain on top as well. So it's going to freeze — so that ice actually grows," he says. "You can do this over seasons, because at that elevation it doesn't melt."

Villagers Mukhtar (left) and Saeed Baltistani are leading the revival of an ancient ritual: combining chunks of ice from what villagers consider to be a female glacier and a male glacier to create a new glacier baby. Diaa Hadid/NPR hide caption

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Men at a tea house perched over their village of Chunda. They're part of a group that's trying to mate glaciers to create a new glacier baby as human-induced warming rapidly melts the glaciers the residents have traditionally relied on for water. The U.N. is supporting their efforts. Diaa Hadid/NPR hide caption

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Men at a tea house perched over their village of Chunda. They're part of a group that's trying to mate glaciers to create a new glacier baby as human-induced warming rapidly melts the glaciers the residents have traditionally relied on for water. The U.N. is supporting their efforts.

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For the glacier baby project, village leader Saeed Baltistani knocked on doors and convinced dozens of men, including his friend, the farmer Malik, to undertake the grueling ritual during a Himalayan winter. Chunda resident Mukhtar, who only has one name, led men on a four-day walk through heavy snow to reach a mountain where, his elders told him, the finest female glaciers could be found. The men scaled the mountain and smashed off chunks of white glaciers with sledgehammers.

Malik led other men up K2, or, the world's second highest mountain, to find the best male glaciers. Malik works seasonally as a porter for mountaineers, so it was a climb he knew well. "For years I was observing the strongest male ones," he grinned.

It took the men over a week to reach the male glaciers. They returned, frostbitten and laden with chunks of precious ice. Then, following a tradition of observing silence during the ritual mating process, the men gathered in Chunda and silently trudged hundreds of feet up their local mountain, carrying the glacier chunks. They found a large crevice near a mountain stream, like an underground room, where they lay down chaff in the form of wheat husks and coal. A village cleric put the male glacier chunks atop this bed. Then the volunteers added the female pieces. They poured spring water over them and blanketed them with more coal and chaff. The cleric recited some verses of the Qur'an.

"We need to pipe water here," he sighed. "She's a baby, she needs to be fed." He brightened as he peered under nearby boulders – the glacier baby was spreading underneath them. "She's growing!" Baltistani announced.

Glacier mating is an uncertain process.

Villagers Said Baltistani, Yasin Malik and NPR translator Zeba Batool hike up a mountain looming over the village of Chunda to inspect the glacier baby. Diaa Hadid/NPR hide caption

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Villagers Said Baltistani, Yasin Malik and NPR translator Zeba Batool hike up a mountain looming over the village of Chunda to inspect the glacier baby.

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, of the Agha Khan Agency, says the charity oversaw glacier mating in the 1990s, but it didn't work. The agency stopped funding the project. Shamsher Ali, the village elder of Machulo, says his elders tried, and failed, to grow a glacier baby about a decade ago.

Steiner, the hydrologist, notes that technically residents aren't growing a glacier. "The definition of a glacier is it has to be dynamic. It has to move. If it doesn't move, it's just a block of ice."

A "glacier baby" covered in wheat husks on a mountainside over the village of Chunda. The baby was created two years ago after villagers undertook the ancient ritual of glacier mating: mixing white glaciers, which residents believe are female, and are brown glaciers, colored by soil and rocks, which are believed to be male. Diaa Hadid/NPR hide caption

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A "glacier baby" covered in wheat husks on a mountainside over the village of Chunda. The baby was created two years ago after villagers undertook the ancient ritual of glacier mating: mixing white glaciers, which residents believe are female, and are brown glaciers, colored by soil and rocks, which are believed to be male.

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of the, an expert on Balti culture who advises residents on glacier mating for the U.N., called for patience. Even if done correctly, "according to indigenous knowledge, it takes 12 years to take root and then another 12 years to grow," Hussain says, a less than ideal timeframe for people who need water now.

Stealing in the name of water

In Machulo, a village some four hours' travel from the scene of the glacier mating, residents are flouting the law to get water. The women and girls who call themselves "the water thieves of Machulo" gather by their village stream, their numbers swelling as the light fades. Some snap gum and gossip. Others sit quietly on boulders, shovels strewn about the scene.

Two women from the village of Machulo farm their lands. As night falls, they'll steal water from a nearby stream that belongs to other residents. Diaa Hadid/NPR hide caption

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Two women from the village of Machulo farm their lands. As night falls, they'll steal water from a nearby stream that belongs to other residents.

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"I've come to steal water," laughs Zahra, a subsistence farmer who guesses she is 50 years old. "All these women have. We are a ladies' gang," she says, gesturing to the women and girls nodding grimly in agreement around her. "We have to do it. Otherwise our fields will go dry."

As evening falls, the women grab their shovels and pile up mud and rubble to block the entrances of water canals that extend like outstretched arms from Machulo's stream. Those canals belong to other residents, leading to their lands. By blocking them, the women can divert more stream water into their own canals, to irrigate their tiny fields of wheat, barley and poplar trees.

, pioneered in the neighboring Indian Himalayan territory of Ladakh by. Arefers to a domed or conical Buddhist shrine, and describes the shape of these frozen structures.

Villager Yasir Parvi, 24, walks on a frozen fountain, or ice stupa, that he helped build over the village of Pari. Pipes that run down from high mountain streams connect to nozzles that spray water into the air, creating a fine mist that freezes in winter, forming a frozen tower that melts in spring, when farmers need water. Diaa Hadid/NPR hide caption

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Villager Yasir Parvi, 24, walks on a frozen fountain, or ice stupa, that he helped build over the village of Pari. Pipes that run down from high mountain streams connect to nozzles that spray water into the air, creating a fine mist that freezes in winter, forming a frozen tower that melts in spring, when farmers need water.

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Simply put, these structures are made by pipes that run down from high mountain streams to a lower-altitude area that can freeze in winter,usually a shaded gorge. The pipes connect to nozzles that, through gravity, spray water into the air, creating a fine mist. The mist freezes through the winter and forms a frozen tower that melts in spring, when farmers need water.

In the village of Pari, Bashir Haidari, a self-taught plumber and electrician, was motivated to try his hand at making an ice stupa.