Time may be running out for the peak's storied glaciers

When I planted my feet next to the signpost at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro last year, they rested on dusty, pebble-strewn ground—not a flake of snow in sight. Below lay the remnants of the great mountain's ice cap, glaciers on the run, most experts say, from the effects of global warming and climate change wrought by deforestation.

A German missionary who in 1849 sent back to Europe the first curious reports of snow at the equator became the laughingstock of the Royal Geographical Society. Forty years later, another German team finally made it to the summit, relying on crampons and ice axes; I needed no such equipment for my ascent. Our Tanzanian guides told us that they could see the glaciers retreating from month to month, each time they made the trip to the summit. Six years earlier, the ground at our camp at 16,000 feet, next to the Arrow Glacier, would have been snow-covered. In 1912, the mountain had about 4.6 square miles of ice; 90 years later, 82 percent of it was gone.

Tanzania's minister of tourism has disputed the claims of a team of American scientists that one-third of the ice field has disappeared in 12 years alone and that the rest will be gone by 2015. But few dispute that the glaciers are diminishing on all flanks, retreating from their leading edges and thinning by as much as three feet a year. Even those who witness these effects firsthand, like my guides, are resistant to outside help; one told me that researchers who remove core samples of the glaciers to study climate change are actually doing more harm than good by leaving more surface area open to the sun. (Climatologists attribute the snow and ice melt not only to global warming but also to deforestation at the mountain's base, which reduces cloud cover, thus exposing the glaciers to more solar radiation.)

The balding of Kilimanjaro could have serious consequences for the people of Tanzania, threatening not just their water supply but the millions of tourist dollars that flow into the region each year. Even without the snows, a climb to the roof of Africa through five different climatic zones is still worthy of anyone's lifetime to-do list. But without the mountain's signature white crown, will more than 20,000 people still attempt to climb it each year? Only time will tell if Hemingway unintentionally jeopardized Kilimanjaro's enigmatic allure when he irrevocably linked the peak to its snowy cap.