Just kilometres from the equator, on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, lies the Rwenzori Mountains. Vast, remote and breathtakingly beautiful, this UNESCO World Heritage site has a secret – it’s home to some of the last tropical glaciers in the world. Hidden high above the lush rainforests and endemic fauna are permanently glaciers ice on – Mount Stanley.

But the impacts of climate change mean that this might not be the case for much longer. The glaciers are retreating, with disastrous consequences for local communities, for whom they hold ecological, cultural and religious significance. But at what rate this is happening – and how much damage has already been done – is almost unknown.

To find this out, Parajumpers has partnered with climate change NGO Project Pressure and its founder, environmental scientist and fellow at The Explorers Club Klaus Thymann, who collaborated with UNESCO and the Uganda Wildlife Authority. Clad in high-performance Parajumpers clothing, Thymann and his team embarked on a daring expedition to establish long-term monitoring equipment and create the world’s first 3D model of the Mount Stanley glacier – an undertaking nobody had previously attempted.

Together with Klaus Thymann on this expedition was Dr. Heïdi Sevestre, a renowned glaciologist and climate advocate who has dedicated her career to studying glaciers around the world. With extensive fieldwork experience in the Arctic, the Alps, and other rapidly melting ice regions, Sevestre has been at the forefront of efforts to raise awareness about the urgent need for glacial preservation.

Getting to the glacier was no mean feat. Roads and helicopters cannot access to the mountain, so getting the heavy equipment needed to film, record and measure the ice in place was an arduous, extended battle. There was no relief when the 70-strong team finally reached the plateau — constant rain and fog made the effort near-impossible, and even working the generator became a struggle.

When the weather finally improved, the team could at last deploy various drones across the Stanley Plateau. These tiny machines had a big responsibility, capturing photos of the top of the mountain using almost 900 images to create a 3D photogrammetry model. What they found was alarming: the face of the Stanley Plateau Glacier had receded by eight metres near the edge in just two years (Thymann and Project Pressure last took photos of the glaciers in 2022).

The Rwenzori Mountains are of vital importance. They are one of the highest, most permanent sources of the River Nile, and constitute one of the largest water catchment areas in Uganda and wider East Africa. Over 5 million people in the region depend on the water they provide. But their significance is beyond the purely ecological.

They are also a sacred site for the local Bakonzo people, who believe that the snow and ice (“Nzururu”) created the god Kithasamba, whose life force flows down into the rivers and lakes created by the glacier water. Custodians of this land for centuries, the Bakonzo people made up the majority of the Project Pressure expedition team, contributing their expert knowledge of the region.

“The Bakonzo people who live among the mountains are strong people who believe that the mountain is a very important aspect of their life,” says Alfred Masereka of the Uganda Wildlife Authority, “The disappearance of the ice is bad news, because it means our gods are being destroyed.” And local residents have already been deeply affected by the effects of climate change, with flash floods in 2020 displacing more than people.