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Astonishing how loud a melting glacier can sound. It gurgles, crashes, ripples and cracks. A Goethe-Institut expedition headed out to capture the last lament of the Tujuksu Glacier before the gates of Almaty. This is the expedition report. By Katina Klänhardt

It is icy cold up here at 3,500 metres altitude and we dig our hands even deeper into our lined jacket pockets as we watch the microphones being dropped slowly into the crevasses of the glacier. Our mission is called Glacier Music. In order to record the sounds made by a melting glacier, we clambered up onto the Tujuksu with highly sensitive recording devices. We are a group of 15 people.

Time is short, as the glacier demonstrates with the countless tiny rivulets of thaw water that happily ripple towards us on the way up. Apparently, the glacier’s temperature comfort level is nothing like ours and it is – in spite of our down jackets – actually far too warm up here.



Yet, that is exactly why we’re here. To raise awareness for advancing glacial melting, the Goethe-Institut’s Glacier Music project is collecting sounds from the melting glacier so that they can be artistically processed and presented at festivals in Central Asia und Europe. The project is being accompanied by scientific symposiums and conferences. The musical starring role is played by the Tujuksu Glacier, where we are now standing at its crevasses, observing the outgoing microphones and catching our breath.

Like a horde of horses

We flatland expedition members increasingly gasp for air with each increase in altitude. Any previous hiking adventures in the alpine uplands are moot here. The Tian Shan Mountains are a size larger. Only the director Christian Frei, who happens to be from Switzerland, is able to cut a halfway decent figure. He’s also the only one to raise his hand when asked who has ever been higher than 4,000 metres. But for that he, along with our mountain guide Alexei, has one of the heaviest loads to carry with his camera equipment.

Sara Monimart from Arte Radio is also unbreakable. She came especially from France to assist us with the recordings and is also willing to scramble out of her tent at five in the morning if necessary. Only when all of the disturbing ambient noise is silent do the glacier sounds have their grand entrance. “It sounds really fascinating through the microphone. Almost like the whistle of a locomotive or the thundering of a horde of horses,” she tells us “stay-at-homes” later over a warming cup of tea in the improvised kitchen of the glaciological station that forms our base camp.

A successful start of a new expedition day. We head off to collect the recording devices from the depths. If the lack of oxygen does not slowly make it impossible to talk, then the sight of the colossal beauty in which we are soon enveloped forces us to fall silent. With their haggard, karstic and snow-topped summits, Peak Molodyozhny, Peak Pogrebetski, Mametov Glacier and the Alpengrad move us to awe and reverence.

Breathless on the summit

The endless boulder pathways of the glacier moraines are also imposing as they snake between the mountains and bring home to us the tremendous force of the glacier as well as its former size. We clamber over rough and smooth, past ice-cold glacial lakes, until the majestic Tujuksu appears before us once again. We cover the remaining height on its white tongue and arduously trudge in a long queue over the creaking and crackling sheet of ice. Our curiosity over the acoustic results of the nocturnal recording session keeps us going.

We spend a total of three full days at the foot of the glacier. The team falls into a bustling working routine. Over the following days we explore the other surrounding peaks for sound and film recordings. The mountain world lives up to its reputation for rapid weather changes and before we know it, we are standing in a dense wall of fog one moment and in snow and hail flurries the next. The sunny climb to the Tujuksu the day before seems almost a Sunday stroll in comparison. As fast as the clouds appear, they disappear again. And then we are standing breathless on the summit of Peak Molodyozhny with a hint of Big Almaty Lake glimmering on the horizon. This is a view that will soon no longer exist due to the warming climate.