See a glacier while you can

Maybe because I live in Florida, a giant sand bar, I am especially fascinated by the vertical.

But I have always loved mountains, beginning in my youth with Mount Hood, the 11-thousand foot "colossus" in Portland's backyard.

I climbed it at age 16, a rite of teen passage I've never forgotten.

So imagine my thrill at taking an aerial cable ride to a "glacier park" at the 14-thousand foot level of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain in China, a massif at the edge of the Tibetan plateau.

There is a long wooden walkway that allows you to view a glacier up close as it breaks up into pinnacles cascading over the mountain side.

If you were to climb to the summit from the viewing platform at the end of the cable, you'd have another 4,000 feet to go.

I suffered no acute mountain sickness, mainly because I gave myself time to acclimatize to high altitude in Lijiang, the ancient Naxi people's town near the base, which sits at about 8,000 feet.

This area of northwestern Yunnan province is truly "wild China," and it is clearly one of the best travel adventures for the money.

What kind of adventure did I come to see? Let's call it the unfolding drama of climate change.