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STORY: Chile’s towering El Plomo mountain in the Andes has been climbed and revered for centuries.

The route to the top – more than three miles up – is still the same path carved out by the Incas, with archeological remnants scattered along the way.

But the mountain is crumbling.

Rising global temperatures have melted the permafrost and forced the glacier to retreat.

That's created lagoons, caused landslides and sinkholes that have injured climbers and disturbed the ancient path to the summit.

Now, climbers and guides who, for generations, have earned their livelihoods across the Andes fear for their way of life.

“Perhaps, when you and I are no longer there, everything will be lost…”

Osvaldo Segundo Villegas started working in mountain rescue in 1964 and even participated in the rescue of the Uruguayan rugby team in 1972 that inspired an Oscar-nominated movie.

Up until a few years ago the last push to the summit required a glacier traverse. Now it's a rocky hillside.

“I was in Patagonia too, in several places that had ice, that had glaciers, places where there were glaciers, now there are forests. And that is going to happen.”

The Andes mountain range is home to about 99% of the world’s tropical glaciers, which are more susceptible to climate change because they’re consistently near or at freezing point.

And temperatures are rising faster at higher altitudes.

One multinational study showed that daytime winter surface temperatures in the Andes rose by 1.7 degrees Celsius above 16,000 feet.

El Plomo’s summit is about 17,700 feet.

The Andes are an essential part of the region's water cycle, storing water and ice during the winter. They supply millions across the region with water for drinking, agriculture, hydroelectricity and mining.

But the accelerated glacial retreat has led to the exposure of acidic rocks for the first time in centuries... leading meltwater to acidify and get contaminated with heavy metals that then leach into the water supply.

Erratic and heavy rainfall has degraded the ecosystems, making them more susceptible to erosion, landslides and severe floods.

Here on Mateo peak situated in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca – the largest glacier-covered area in the tropics – mountain guide Rusbel Vidal is becoming less confident about the safety of climbs.

"Four or five years ago it snowed a lot here, so from here you could start climbing with crampons, but the snow was less and less, and now there is no snow at all."

And Edson Ramirez, a park ranger and risk assessor for the Huascaran National Park, which comprises 90% of the Cordillera Blanca, says the environment’s drastic changes and loss of glacier mass have made crossings a “difficult labyrinth.”

For people like 60-year-old muleteer Francisco Gallardo who has been working on El Plomo since he was 14, the climate-driven changes mean abandoning the life his family has led for generations.

"I estimate ten more years and bye-bye... ten more years, El Plomo is gone."