The catastrophic August 26, 2026, glacial collapse and rock-ice avalanche occurred on the north face of the peak of Langtang Lirung. Roughly 10 kilometers away is the Yala Glacier, situated in Nepal’s Langtang Valley. The Yala Glacier is one of the most-studied glaciers in the region and the key to understanding how Himalayan glaciers will react to climate change. It has lost about 66% of its mass and retreated over 780 meters since the 1970s, making it a prominent symbol of rapid Himalayan ice loss.
Both the Yala Glacier and the disaster site belong to the same fragile cryospheric ecosystem in the Himalayas, where thawing permafrost and rising temperatures have destabilized high-altitude slopes. They also leave behind unstable glacier lagoons, high up in the mountains. Trapped behind ice or morains.
The loss of ice creates an urgent hazard in terms of floods and a long term hazard as the Himalayan glaciers serve as water towers that feed one billion people.
In May 2025 there was a ceremony where glaciologists and local communities mourned the loss of Nepal’s Yala glacier, believed to be the first Nepalese glacier to be declared “dead”. The stones left at the base of the Yala glacier carry messages by two authors, Manjushree Thapa and Andri Snaer Magnason, in English, Nepali and locally spoken Tibetan.
Magnason’s inscription reads: “A message to the future: Yala glacier is one of 54,000 glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalayas, most of which are expected to vanish this century due to global warming. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it. May 2025 426ppm CO2.
Thoughts go to the people in the picture, the scientists, the monks and the mountaineers. I do not know if or how they were affected. The world has to wake up. Now.