The Maladetta North Face in the Spanish Pyrenees, Glacier, September 2013.

I thought it might be interesting to compare the North face of the Maladetta mountians in September 2013 with a picture in the book written by Harold Spencer and published in 1898. In the photo from the Portillon de Benasque taken on my trip last year, the smaller glacier is fairly clear and also the grey moraine left by the glacier of old. This is shown as two "tongues" on either side of the central ridge. This moraine corresponds well with the extent of the glacier shown in the photo from the 1890s. It would be interesting to see some photos taken in the middle of the last century.

Maladetta mountains photographed by me from the Portillon de Benesaque (2444 m) in September 2013. Notice the grey moraine showing the previous extent of the glacier clearly visible in the 1890s

Maladetta mountains from the north, summer 1896 or 1897 (Harold Spender, "Through the High Pyrenees with Illustrations and supplement section by H. Llewllyn Smith", Publisher A.D. Innes & |Company, 1898. Notice the extent of the "tongues" shown as grey moraine in the photo of 2013.