IMAGE: RETO GUNTLI
SMART TRAVELLER
MEET THE ADVENTURER GARRETT FISHER
The US aerial photographer is on a mission to capture the world’s dwindling glaciers for posterity, shooting alone from his antique, single-engine plane
conceivably hit something. Once I set the throttle, it stays constant. The rudder is foot-controlled, and I hold the stick in my leſt hand and the camera in my right. I take largely wide-angle shots, so even though I’m looking through the viewfinder, I can partially look aſter aircraſt orientation, too. It’s a choreographed art but it’s become second nature.
What’s the most extraordinary thing you’ve seen from your plane? I’m continuously wowed by sights like clouds forming off the leeside of the Matterhorn or gale-force winds at 16,000ſt around Mont Blanc, but what strikes me most is the Konkordiaplatz in Switzerland. It’s part of the Aletsch Glacier system, which is the longest in the Alps, where four major glaciers converge. It’s something you don’t get tired of seeing.
Where does your passion for glaciers come from? When I was a teenager in the late ’90s, a friend told me about a study that indicated Glacier National Park in Montana would melt by 2030. I was in upstate New York, I’d never even been to a real mountain range, but I had a visceral reaction: I had to see them before they were gone. Then life got in the way. It wasn’t until 2015, when I was living in the Rockies, before I started chasing them.
Why do you fly a 70-year-old Piper PA11, with no electrical instruments or GPS? The plane chose me. My grandfather had been flying this style of airplane since the 1940s, and during his retirement he restored them, too. He found this plane in the late 1980s and I inherited it in 2010. Aerial photography wasn’t a particular ambition
at the time but it was evident from the get-go I had a knack for it — I could see ways to avoid issues with haze and perspective. I moved out to Colorado and started figuring out mountain flying by myself. Within eight months, I had my first aerial photography book — Above the Summit: An Antique Airplane Conquers Colorado’s Fourteeners — all taken on that plane, without a radio, without anything.
How do you fly solo and take photographs at the same time? Practically speaking, I’m always at least 1,500ſt above any physical object, so there’s a lot of time before I can
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How does it feel to chase aſter something that’s forecast to disappear? I have conflicting feelings. In the winter, the glaciers are visible but masked by snowpack, so one can become desensitised to the immediacy of climate change’s ramifications. In the peak of summer, however, I can see every detail. My first reaction when I see blue ice cascading down the mountainside in thundering waterfalls is to think, that’s beautiful. Then I realise that’s damage: they’re melting. The Alps are home to one-third of the world’s ski
resorts, so they resonate within the West as the capital of mountain culture. However, in the middle of a clear August day, looking at the whole range from a high vantage point, there aren’t a lot of glaciers there. The thought of how long this can last is always in the back of my mind when I’m flying.
Tell us more about your Global Glacier Initiative, a new project aiming to collect glacier images from around the world. I consider glaciers to be jewels, and they’re important from an ecological standpoint, too. I’m trying to capture and share their majesty, even though I’m not convinced my work will lead to specific action to save them. I’m oſten thinking about the future generations that haven’t yet been born. One hundred or 200 years from now, people will be interested in this past, mystical world of ice, and the images will be useful for science and outreach purposes. INTERVIEW: ANGELA LOCATELLI
Garrett Fisher’s latest book, Glaciers of the Bernese Alps (2021), is out now. £20.
wgarrettfisher.me globalglacierinitiative.org @highaltitudephot
READ THE FULL INTERVIEW ONLINE AT NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC.
CO.UK/TRAVEL
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