CHACALTAYA, Bolivia - If anyone needs a reminder of the

on-the-ground impacts of global climate change, come to the Andes

mountains in Bolivia. At 17,388 feet above sea level, Chacaltaya, an

18,000 year-old glacier that delighted thousands of visitors for

decades, is gone, completely melted away as of some sad, undetermined

moment early this year.

''Chacaltaya has disappeared. It no longer exists,'' said Dr. Edson

Ramirez, head of an international team of scientists that has studied

the glacier since 1991.

Chacaltaya

(the name in Aymara means ''cold road'') began melting in the

mid-1980s. Ramirez, the assistant director of the Institute of

Hydraulics and Hydrology at the Universidad Mayor de San Andres in

nearby La Paz, documented its disappearance in March.

Approximately

35 miles from La Paz, it takes an hour and a half to drive the gravel

and rock road up tortuous switchbacks to the top of the mountain of the

same name. Visitors on a clear day -- and there are many such days --

can see the Bolivian highland plain, or altiplano, thousands of feet

below, and the nearby Huayna Potosi and Illimani mountains, part of the

Cordillera Real de los Andes.

AN EARLY DEATH

Ten years ago

Ramirez and his team of researchers concluded that the glacier would

survive until 2015. But the rate of thaw increased threefold in the

last decade, according to their studies. He believes the disappearance

of Chacaltaya is an indication of the potent effects at higher

elevations of the interaction of greenhouse gas accumulation and an

increase in average global temperatures.

And he thinks other

glaciers in the region also may be melting at a rate faster than

previously known. Illimani, the colossal 21,200-foot mountain that

looms over the city of La Paz and has served as the backdrop for

postcard-perfect pictures since film was invented, is the home to

several glaciers. They likely will melt completely within 30 years, he

said.

''It's very probable that other glaciers are disappearing

faster than we thought,'' he said. Researchers fear that Chacaltaya's

fate will be shared by other glaciers in other areas of Bolivia, and in

Peru and Ecuador as well, he said.

In May, the members of

Ramirez's research team will gather here to honor the fallen glacier

and to commemorate the end of 18 years of work.

Chacaltaya became

well-known long before it started melting. For decades it was declared,

and aggressively marketed, as ``the highest ski run in the world.''

Despite

the melting of the glacier, today a handful of hard-core alpinistas and

the occasional adventure tourist still schlep their skis and poles over

the summit a few hundred yards from where the glacier used to be. On a

lucky day, when a little snow has fallen just below the stony ridge,

they can ski for about 600 feet. Then they walk back.

THE SKI LODGE

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''Very

few come to ski now,'' laments Alfredo Martinez, 73, who is one of the

founders of the Club Andino de Bolivia, based in La Paz. A lifelong

mountaineer, Martinez and a small cadre of mostly young followers keep

the ski lodge open, serving tea and soup and burning old wooden boards

from a nearby building in the fireplace for warmth. They charge

visitors 15 bolivianos, the equivalent of $2.10, for a clean-up and

maintenance fund.

In the good old days, when every tour agency

and guide book heralded Chacaltaya's unique altitudinal fame, the Club

Andino organized ski competitions and stored the equipment of dozens of

its members in the lodge. A large stone-and-wood building housed a

winch-and-cable tow operation that dragged skiers to the top of the

glacier. The descent was often heart-stopping, and if the skiers didn't

stop in time they could end up on the rocks below the snow-topped

glacier.

WATER SUPPLY

But it's not the end of alpine skiing

at Chacaltaya that worries researcher Ramirez, but the death of the

glacier and what that means for the people of the Andean cordillera. On

the western, mostly arid side of the Andes, millions of people depend

on rain, snow run-off and melting glaciers like Chacaltaya, Illimani

and Huayna Potosifor their water.

There's another problem, too.

Not only are the glaciers melting, but less rain seems to be falling in

the Andes, according to recent studies. The big rain-carrying monsoons

drifting west from the Amazon basin have declined in size and

intensity, another indication of major climactic changes, Ramirez said.

This

year, for the first time, the amount of water flowing out of reservoirs

serving nearly 2.5 million people in La Paz and its adjacent city, El

Alto, will exceed the amount of water flowing into them. This

eventually will become a major political issue for leaders in La Paz

and El Alto, he said.

To Juan Velazquez, who grew up just over

the mountain from Chacaltaya in the now-abandoned mining town Mulluni,

and later moved with his family to La Paz, the defunct glacier means

less income. As a taxi driver, he can earn the equivalent of 50 U.S.

dollars driving tourists from La Paz to the glacier and back. That's

the equivalent of a month's wages for some in this impoverished land.

BEYOND INCOME

But the loss of the glacier is the saddest part for him, not the lost wages.

As

a child, he and his playmates would use paint to darken under their

eyes, just like they saw in American movies, then journey up to

Chacaltaya to play in fresh snow atop the glacier.

''It's a tragedy,'' he said. ``It's as if someone had died.''