When is a book more than just a book? When it’s also a documentary film, a Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies photography exhibition, and an awareness-boosting salute to United Nations International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation in 2025. 

The new book, Meltdown, is one facet of a multimedia project called “Guardians of the Ice”, a non-profit organization focused on raising awareness of the rapidly shrinking Columbia Icefield – the largest icefield in North America’s Rocky Mountains. A unique blend of art and science, the “Guardians” hope the initiative will resonate on a level more emotional than alarmist.

The hauntingly seductive images by Jim Elzinga and Roger Vernon go straight to the heart, bringing to life the 125-square-mile blanket of ice that drapes the Alberta-British Columbia border. A lauded alpinist and photographer, Elzinga’s intent is to “show nature, the ice, the mountains in a way that catalyses people to act in their own way towards greater engagement and ecological responsibility.” 

Vernon’s rich cinematography talents are front and centre: his resume includes Legends of the Fall, Godzilla, War for the Planet of the Apes and, notably, an Academy Award best cinematography nomination for Unforgiven, winner of four Oscars. Decades of adventures behind the lens have taken him from Tibet to Mongolia, Kashmir to Bhutan, yet time and again, he’s found himself drawn to document the waning Icefields.

“With this project, we are exploring a domain typically reserved for a highly select group of individuals, usually pilots or rescue personnel in service of earth-bound adventurers,” explains Vernon. “This unique perspective, largely undocumented, truly illuminates the current state of glacier reduction and changes to the mountain landscape.”

Awareness around global ice loss got a grim bump in 2023, when temperatures produced the warmest year on record. According to the UN, glaciers across western mountain ranges of Canada – the most glacierized country in the world – are projected to lose between 74% and 96% of their 2006 volumes by 2100. Not brilliant numbers, least of all for skiers.