HUNZA, Pakistan: Aleena Gul used to watch the pool beside her home in Pakistan’s Hunza Valley freeze solid each winter, transforming it into a makeshift ice hockey rink.
This year, it barely froze at all.
“If we see, there’s a big difference between 2018 and now in 2026,” said Gul, a local player whose family has hosted the community tournament for eight seasons.
“Winter used to begin in November and everything would freeze, . It’s January now and the ice still hasn’t frozen properly,” said Gul, a local player whose family has hosted the community tournament for eight seasons.
The change has disrupted a small but growing winter sports tradition in the mountainous region near the Chinese border, where residents say colder, longer winters once provided reliable natural ice.
Scientists studying the wider Hindu Kush-Himalayan region have reported fewer extreme cold events and shorter snow seasons, with snowfall increasingly failing to settle. Weather data for Hunza shows winter precipitation down by about 30 percent since the late 2010s, with some recent winters two to three degrees Celsius warmer.
That is a challenge for a region reliant on visitors, where winter tourism depends heavily on snowfall and freezing temperatures.
The community-run ice hockey tournament in Hunza depends entirely on natural ice. When Gul’s pool failed to freeze properly this year, organizers scrambled to find an alternative venue nearly two hours north, in a town close to the Chinese border.
Even there, conditions were difficult.
“I expected better ice conditions, but when I saw the rink I felt a bit sad. Many of our players fell. The surface had too many bumps and wasn’t strong,” said Yahya Karim, another player.
Of three matches scheduled on the first day, only one went ahead.
“Today, we got ready at almost around 9 o’clock. When we got called for the match, we saw that the ice was not in a good condition. So, all these things are very unexpected for us. And this is a side effect of climate change,” Gul said.
Naseer Uddin, co-founder of the youth organization SCARF, said volunteers had worked for about a week preparing the arena.
“We worked on this arena for about a week. We had planned [a match] here. Then, suddenly, when the sun came out today, so we had to switch suddenly because the ice in this arena has been spoiled,” he said.
Sadiq Saleem, president of the Altit Town Management Society, said residents were witnessing a noticeable change.
“We are witnessing a sudden shift in Hunza’s weather pattern, [both] in the snowfall and freezing [temperature] here. We are seeing a big shift in the intensity of winter here,” he said.
The girls’ match eventually went ahead, and Gul’s team emerged victorious. But the uncertainty over ice conditions has left many wondering how long the tradition can survive.
Climate change has become a growing concern for Pakistan, which contributes less than 1 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions yet is frequently ranked among the countries most vulnerable to global warming.
This week, Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority warned of an elevated risk of glacial lake outburst floods in the north as rising temperatures threaten to accelerate snow and glacier melt. Seasonal forecasts point to higher-than-normal temperatures and possible early heatwave conditions in Gilgit-Baltistan and upper Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, regions that include Hunza.
For now, players in the valley are making do with what winter brings. But as temperatures rise, even a simple backyard rink is no longer guaranteed.
