glacier

EACH step I take is marked by a comforting crunch as my spiked hiking boots grip the snow.

Directly ahead of me is Mont Blanc’s breathtaking peak, straddling France, Italy and Switzerland.

And beneath my feet is the Ghiacciaio del Monte Bianco glacier.

I’m reminded to stop my gawping and keep walking, by a firm tug from the rope tying me to my guide and to the three other people in the expedition.

I approach the edge of the glacier and spot a huge crack in the snow where it’s threatening to suddenly fall away.

Then, as I peer thousands of feet down into the valley to try and spot my hotel, Gran Baita, I hear a huge rumble.

WAIL OF A TIME

I drove Irish Route 66 with deserted golden beaches and pirate-like islands

TEMPTED?

Tiny ‘Bali of Europe’ town with stunning beaches, €3 cocktails and £20 flights

Looking nervously to my right, I see a small avalanche careering down the side of Mont Blanc.

It’s a not-so-subtle reminder that the ropes around our waists are the only things that might offer protection if the glacier beneath our feet suddenly shifts.

But despite the snow on the ground, I’m soon stripping off my layers because the temperatures can reach balmy heights in this gorgeous Italian Alpine region during summer.

To arrive here, I hopped on the Skyway Monte Bianco cable car which whizzed me 3,466 metres up to the glacier from the village of Courmayeur in ten minutes — with a stop at 2,173 metres to switch cabs.

The cable car costs £50 in advance to go to the top — but this does include entrance to a variety of attractions including an Alpine garden, kids’ play area and Europe’s highest library.

As well as a chance to refuel in its restaurants, the middle Skyway station offers another treat — a cave where they mature a vintage wine grown here.

And even if you’re not drinking wine, you’ll be able to drink in the amazing views of Italy’s Aosta Valley.

Skyway Monte Bianco slowly rotates so you don’t miss any of the incredible scenery.

Back in the sun-drenched valleys, there’s not a speck of snow in sight — but we still eat for winter, piling our plates with gourmet raclette and classic Italian pastas.

The region’s restaurant highlights include Cadran Solaire, whose wild-boar ragu is the stuff foodie dreams are made of.

But if your stomach is firmly in summer mode, you can tuck into lighter home-cooked delights at La Terrazza, where the owner has brought southern Italian delicacies to the Alps.

Classics like carbonara are on offer, as well as starters of anchovies with mozzarella.

If you’re worried about all those calories, the slopes of Courmayeur will be your saviour.

The mountains become a walkers’ paradise in summer, with unbelievable trails from the two valleys either side.

One morning, I headed to Val Ferret, which can be accessed by bike, a free bus or car.

It’s flanked by the Mont Blanc Massif, Mont Dolent and Tour Noir.

From here you can see the gigantic Brenva Glacier — the second-longest glacier in Italy.

The valley can be enjoyed on foot, or on horseback for around €30 (£25) an hour.

But for those who prefer something more challenging, the ski area Checrouit offers uphill walks where you climb 300 metres in just an hour.

Thank goodness for the heated pool and sauna back at the Gran Baita.

I’m not sure how my limbs would have recovered without them.

Glaciers aren’t stationary. Immense and imposing, formed through the downward trajectory of water from mountains as it collects and freezes, they have always moved. Now, however, they’re leaving. The demise of glaciers is a fact inherent in all the bad news about the effects of climate change on what once seemed permanent. But for Icelanders, whose connection to glaciers is ancient and mythic, our human epoch has become an extended hospice for the landscape of their lives.

Somehow, though, Sara Dosa’s documentary on this matter, “Time and Water,” avoids playing like a funeral in waiting. Built around Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason’s voiced lamentations on a vanishing frozen world, along with archival footage of his family, it’s no simple howl of grief, even when it takes us to a publicly held memorial in 2019 for Iceland’s Ok glacier, the first such “death” diagnosis in the country’s history. Rather, Dosa’s film is a meditation on change — both the kind that we accept with a heavy heart and something more general. “Time and Water” is a curiously vibrant elegy, teeming with appreciation for the intimate majesty that is all life, generational and geologic.

Dosa has finessed this emotional-meets-elemental space before in her Academy Award-nominated 2022 documentary “Fire of Love,” about married volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft. That was a wonderfully eccentric romance forged in molten lava. Here, she’s in a collaboration of sorts with her subjects, both human and elemental. Magnason’s opening narration over spectacular footage of glaciers — up close and from far away — gently informs us that we’re watching a time capsule, one where the bonds of family and environment are intertwined.

We learn how Iceland’s glaciers, essentially rivers of varying pace, begat their unique ecosystems, but also how they provided the breathtaking terrain upon which Magnason’s grandparents Hulda and Árni fell in love. (Grandma Hulda was the first woman to fly in Iceland, itself a very cool fact.) The onset of dementia in Árni spurs his grandson to consider what’s lost when the markers of memory depart. “Time and Water” touches on the epic verse called rimurs, passed down via chanted song by Icelandic women, their descriptive, sorrowful tales like dispatches from previous ages.

“Tone poem” is an overused term in cinema, but the humbling “Time and Water,” graced with a playful, atmospheric Dan Deacon score, earns that distinction. Naturally, it helps that you can never tire of all the air-crisped glacier imagery, captured digitally and in 16mm. Folded into the cozy slide-show vibe of Magnason’s home videos and the carefully chosen archival footage, the movie plays like a scrapbook portrait in which home just happens to boast the grandest of backyards.

How much longer will Icelanders enjoy it? The glaciers are predicted to be gone within 200 years. That’s an eternity or a drip, depending on whose survival we’re talking about. Still, “Time and Water” collapses the notion that we are somehow separate from these ancient, essential formations: an encouraging hello to the future from inside a sobering goodbye.