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From Audible originals, I'm Cassie Depeckel, and this is Against the Odds in their own words.

On the afternoon of July 31st, 2025, 38-year-old climate reporter Alec Loon was exactly where he wanted to be,

hiking around a glacier in Norway's Fulgafana National Park.

A glacier is something that's so still and quiet, but at the same time is full of this

incredible motion and force. We're talking about thousands of tons of ice that are

literally sculpting the landscape, carving out valleys in the middle of mountains, traveling through

deep time. It started 10,000 years ago, and this ice is moving toward me. To me, that's just,

it's magical.

You feel so small, but in a good way, next to a glacier.

And you feel like your life is just a blink of an eye

compared to the tens of thousands of years this thing might have been going.

Alec and his wife had just spent the week in Bergen in the southwest of Norway, visiting his

sister, who had recently moved there. His parents flew out from the U.S. to join them. When planning

the trip, Alex saw how close they'd be to the Fulgophana Glacier and knew he had to make a pilgrimage.

It's this 60-square-mile hunk of ice on top of a mountain, just white, pure ice cap with that deep blue glacier ice underneath.

I wasn't going to go to Norway and miss the opportunity to get out and see a glacier up close.

So Alec and his wife made a plan. She would fly back

to their flat outside of London. The next day, Alec would embark on a four-night solo backpacking

trip in the National Park and then fly home. An experienced backpacker, Alec always had his gear packed and ready to go.

He'd climbed mountains at high altitudes, spent time in the remote wilderness,

...