At the start of August, I rode my bamboo bike from the city of Kangding to Hailuogou, ‘Sea Conch Valley,’ to see an amazing low-altitude glacier. Like all glaciers on the southeastern Tibetan plateau, it is melting faster than the global average due to human-induced climate change.
I already wrote a piece about the final stage of my visit to the glacier, called Weeping Giants. Check it out if you haven’t already. But in this video, you can join me on the adventure and see how I got there. It contains spectacular mountain ranges, the kindness of locals and alpine cycling.
I shot this video just before the 2022 China heatwave and the Luding Earthquake that followed. Both these disasters hit me emotionally, due to the impact they must have had on the kind people I met (some of whom you will see in this video), and on the rapidly-destabilising glacier. Hailuogou glacier is located right next to Moxi Old Town — located directly above Moxi fault line which triggered the quake and killed 93 people. I was very lucky not to have been there when it happened.
If you haven’t already, check out Triple Threat, my post about living through the heatwave and earthquake, as well as a Covid lockdown. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the video. Please leave a comment on YouTube and subscribe to our channel if you can.
Best wishes,
Joe.