Climate champion returns (From Your Local Guardian)

Climate champion returns

12:28pm Thursday 10th August 2006 in

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Battling thunder storms, trekking for hours on end and coming face to face with the reality of climate change was all in a days' work for Sutton's climate change champion.

Aazim Ihsan won an environmental competition in May and last week returned from Switzerland where he joined eight other champions from across the UK when he visited the Gurschen glacier.

The 13-year-old, who lives in Cheam, trekked 2,345 metres over five hours to reach the Chelenalp hut where he was shown evidence of how the glacier has shrunk since the hut was first built 80 years ago.

Aazim said: "The trip was fantastic. We got first hand information on how the glacier mountains are melting and it was frightening to see how much they were melting by.

"Actually seeing the glaciers and being able to walk on them was the best bit and they were much bigger than I thought.

"The scariest moment was going down to the glaciers because we had to climb down a number of rocks and there were a few falls."

While the trip was intended to educate the champions, there was still time for fun with a game of cricket on the "roof of the world", a high-altitude spot on the Swiss Alps.

"The champions are really friendly and they like to socialise, so it was not hard to settle in," Aazim said.

Simon Featherstone, the UK ambassador to Switzerland, praised the champions, calling them ambassadors for Britain and urging them to spread the word of the need to take action to combat climate change.