StampCollector

Winter is coming to South America; within weeks the ski resorts of Chile and Argentina should receive a welcome blanket of snow and the first of the season’s skiers and snowboarders.

In Bolivia, though, home to the world’s highest ski resort, things are a little different.

Chacaltaya, an Andean glacier overlooking La Paz from 5,700m above sea level, has long retained an air of mystique despite offering only a tiny downhill run. For snow freaks, the chance to glide through the snow almost six kilometres up in the air is strangely tempting, no matter how difficult it is to move around at the altitude.

But Chacultaya is terminally ill, and few may ever get the chance to ride the glacier again. Climate change is famously wreaking havoc with the world’s glaciers. The tropical glaciers in Andean areas of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia are among the worst-hit.

Now, as temperatures plummet at Chacaltaya, little snow lies on the mountain. In the small ski hut perched at the bottom of the run there is no-one around from the Club Andino Boliviano, the organisation which runs the “resort”, to talk about winter sports. The ancient, scary-looking towlift stands idle as the sun blazes high in the clear blue sky.

The views are spectacular – from the summit of Chacaltaya the visitor can see the huge bowl of La Paz and the teeming expanse of El Alto sprawling below them, before turning to take in the raw mountain scenery all around.

In the far distance, at least 200km away, is the cone of the Sajama Volcano, Bolivia’s highest peak. To the right, shimmering in the distance, is Lake Titicaca. Adjacent to Chacaltaya - and still covered in snow - is the 6,000m-plus peak of Huayna Potosi; La Paz’s ever-present guardian mountain, Illimani, seems even closer from this height.

Our guide for the day tells us that earlier this year heavy rainfall brought good snow in what is supposed to be Latin America’s summer. But now the rains have gone and the snowfall has melted, it is hard to see much evidence of what the BBC’s Latin American expert once called a “majestic” glacier.

We huff and puff our way up from the ski station in silence, stepping over scree and rock all the way to the top of the short ski lift. No snow lies at the top of the lift’s range although theres is some away to our right – patchy, soft and impermanent. The most snow and ice lie only on mountain’s final slopes, up to its 5,700m peak. Even then the snow is soft underfoot and the ice is prone to giving way beneath us.

There is no doubt that strapping on a snowboard and attempting to twist and turn my way down Chacaltaya’s steep slope would have been fun – if immensely tiring.

But it seems the glacier’s days are numbered. Travel agents in La Paz selling day trips up the mountain roll their eyes when they talk about the views from the top – “¡Que lindo!” – and wave their hands in the air when I make any reference to skiiing. “No mas, no mas, que lastima…”

I’m no glacier expert, but Chacaltaya certainly did not seem to be in the rudest of health. Experts had given the glacier another decade or so, but now say 2008 could see the end of the permanent ice on the hillside.

On a wider scale, the melting of glaciers in the high Andean regions threatens water supplies and raises potential flooding problems for communities across the region. The evidence of change is obvious to those who know their mountains: on a recent trek in Peru, our guide pointed towards a small glacier that reached barely 50 metres down a crevice. Just two years ago that slab of ancient ice reached another 100 metres or so down the gully, he siaid. Looking around me it suddenly seemed obvious that the small splashes of snow atop these brown tropical peaks would have once been vivid slabs of white ice.

Those days are gone, as, it seems, are Chacaltaya’s. The highest ski resort in the world has withered and died.