Explorers Børge Ousland and Vincent Colliard trek across the planet’s largest frozen expanses, documenting climate devastation in a bid to save Earth’s “big freezers.”
Words :: Kara-Leah Grant
As destructive wildfires become the new norm in multiple regions of the planet, Ice Legacy—spearheaded by Børge Ousland of Norway and Vincent Colliard of France—stands out like a lone glacier against a burning horizon, a stark reminder of what’s at stake in our rapidly warming world.
That mission? To walk across the world’s 20 largest icefields, collecting samples, specimens and snapshots along the way to document the devastation of climate change and pressure governments to take protective action.
Ice Legacy stands out like a lone glacier against a burning horizon.
“If we do not care about these big freezers, we will end up having constant fever because the planet will be too warm,” says Colliard. “We must protect ice, and it concerns every living creature on this planet.”
The team is 11 icefields in, and the latest adventure was the Juneau Icefield in Alaska.* This field sprawls like a frozen cathedral of ancient blue and white, its glacial rivers carving silent hymns into the stark Alaskan wilderness.
“The transition between blue ice and snow higher on the plateau was pretty crazy!” says Colliard. “The fresh layer of snow forms extremely thin bridges and it’s sometimes impossible to see. It’s treacherous terrain!”
Treacherous—and stunning. Colliard points out that the Juneau landscape, and those of the other icefields, are those rare places on the planet, like oceans, where humans can’t cover the crust with concrete. There is no advertising, no red lights and no casinos—just beauty and wildlife.
That beauty is degrading, though, and Ousland and Colliard are bearing witness to the changes with every new icefield they cross.
“The snow bridges are becoming weaker and weaker,” explains Colliard. “There is more and more algae on the ice, which is a sign that the temperatures are rising. There is more and more black soot, which contributes directly to the ice recession. Now we have to reschedule certain expeditions because the summer comes too early and there is a lack of snow to access and exit the ice.”
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The Juneau expedition was rescheduled for fall 2024 for a different reason. “My wife Caroline Côté gave birth to a little Viking in the spring, so Børge and I had to postpone our trip until fall,” says Colliard. “At that time of the year, we had to navigate extensively on blue ice and we crossed hundreds, maybe thousands, of open crevasses. We covered 172 kilometres in 20 days with no rest day! A fall crossing is much more complicated.”
Colliard and Ousland are not giving up, though, even with the increased risk climate change is presenting. They are clear on their mission, inspired by American Will Steger who led a dogsled expedition across Antarctica that covered 3,741 miles in seven months in the winter of 1989-90. Steger used the mission to get the attention of world leaders, which led to the protection of Antarctica from mining exploitation with the 1991 ratification of the 1961 Antarctic Treaty.
Follow the Ice Legacy Project at www.icelegacy.org and on Instagram at @icelegacyproject.
*Update: Since the publication of this article, the team ticked off Ellesmere Island. “Børge Ousland and I finished the Ellesmere expedition complete crossing unsupported,” wrote Vincent Colliard on Instagram in June 2025. “From a polar perspective, Ellesmere is the kind of place that not many of us know. It can not compete with the attention drawn to the South Pole. However, it makes the South Pole and the Hercules route sound like a walk in the park.”
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