Ladakh Frozen Lake Half Marathon

This event is held in the Union Territory of Ladakh, an area at the border of China and India. The lake (Pangong Tso) is salt water, and does freeze over in the winter. This event was started this year to help raise awareness about the area, to bring in much needed tourist dollars, and to help the local inhabitants have something fun and interesting to do in the middle of winter, which is obviously pretty harsh. The half-marathon started in Lukung and ended at Maan village. The organizers dubbed the race “The Last Run,” hoping to remind people that climate change is happening, and they are wanting to save the Himalayas.

So, can we do something of this sort for raising awareness in Montana about climate change? For this wintertime, it does seem like a stretch to discuss climate change (meaning the warming of the climate, the melting of the glaciers, rising sea levels). As I write, I’m overlooking the Beartooth Mountains above Nye, with a low of -27 last night as snow fell and flew around for a typical February 3-day storm. Most of us have already forgotten about last month’s record high temperatures, no precipitation, etc. So, all that’s happening is watching Mother Nature’s way of making up for lost time. But the scientist’s predictions keep getting proven every year – the glaciers are disappearing, the Antarctic ice is splitting up, and it does appear that the climate is changing. Hosting this far-flung frozen lake 1⁄2 marathon I’m sure was mainly spurred on by the tourist dollars will improve the financial condition of the area. They say it is also for promoting sustainable winter tourism. It did help to have the presence of the world press taking pictures, spreading the word about something unique to do – it’s exotic and something new for those with ready cash. Sigh. I know the Ridge Run in Bozeman helps the local economy, and it gives us all something quasi-exotic to do each summer. In Ladakh, climate change would ultimately keep the lake from freezing, so they might be right, it could become the “Last Run.” I can’t foresee the “Last Bridger Ridge Run”coming any time soon. I guess the way that could happen would be to have such devastating forest fires, that the event would be postponed indefinitely until Montana would stop having forest fires. That’s just something to think about 🙂

While writing this, the results just came in from the Ladakh 1⁄2 marathon held yesterday. It was won by a 30 year-old woman, Stuti Bakshi. She was the only woman from Gujarat in the event, which had 100 participants. And, being the 1st woman to cross the finish line, obviously she has a world record1 Out of the 100 participants, nine were women; four were from Ladakh, and the rest were from other parts of India. It was reported that she finished in 4 hours (sounds a little suspicious – maybe all finishers ended up with a “4 hour” finish time). Stuti reported strong headwinds, and then equally strong tailwinds. Pictures show a rather glare, smooth, shiny ice surface, but she said it was very uneven, never flat, and very hard to run on. Also, all the entrants did a “training run on Sunday, just to test out their equipment so they could make adjustments. Wouldn’t it be fun to have a ‘trial” Ridge Run the day before, just to make sure all your equipment (food, water, clothing, shoes) were ready to go, so you wouldn’t have to get up so early on race day?