CNN – On a summer’s evening in 2019, Zach Sheldon watched huge chunks of ice break off Valdez Glacier in Alaska as it calved into the lake below.
The following morning, the experienced tour guide led his group to a crest on the glacier to see the aftermath.
But as he looked down at the ice-strewn water, he spotted something. He told the tourists to stay back.
The first two bodies were clinging to a canoe, a third was around 150 feet away. They were agonizingly close to the glacier’s edge, and to safety, but had been trapped by ice, slush and debris, said Sheldon, the owner of Alaska Guide Company.
The victims, eventually identified as two Germans and an Austrian, had been boating on Valdez Lake.
Sheldon believes they were drawn closer to the glacier by the unusual blue color of the ice, not realizing the striking hue was a warning sign the glacier was about to calve.
The three people who lost their lives in Alaska are just a few of those who have died on trips to see the world’s fast-disappearing glaciers.
The numbers of fatalities may be relatively small, but each tragedy tells a story about a shifting and more dangerous landscape.
Glacier tourism has boomed in recent years. The ice attracts people for many reasons: to fulfill a bucket list dream, get up close to a natural phenomenon, or simply for adventure.
But there’s also another motivation increasingly present — the desire to see the glaciers before they disappear.
It’s called “last-chance tourism” and it’s a growing market, said Jackie Dawson, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa who has researched the phenomenon.
While tourism has so often been about firsts — the first to climb a mountain or sail a stretch of water — now it’s also about lasts, she told CNN …
