St. Mary's Glacier, the beloved summer ski destination tucked into Arapaho National Forest near Idaho Springs, has melted, according to FOX31 Denver, which reported that explorers found the site essentially gone. The disappearance caps a dramatic decline for a spot that has drawn hikers and summer skiers up its 1.5-mile trail for generations.
As reported by FOX31 Denver, colorado experts have weighed in on why the ice at St. Mary's disappeared. The decline was already visible by July 31, when the main stretch of ice was only a couple hundred feet long and no more than a few feet deep, with water audibly flowing beneath it, according to the Aspen Times. At the time, some longtime summer skiers wondered whether it would be the first year the ice melted entirely or simply became too thin to ski.
A Snowfield, Not Technically a Glacier
Despite its name, St. Mary's has never actually qualified as a glacier in the scientific sense. Researchers classify it as a perennial snowfield rather than a true glacier, per the same Aspen Times report. The Clear Creek County Tourism Bureau makes a similar distinction, noting that St. Mary's Glacier has been re-categorized as a semi-permanent snowfield because it does not move and is stationary, according to its listing on visitclearcreek.com.
That naming quirk isn't unique to St. Mary's. Colorado has 16 named glaciers, but today only two, Andrews Glacier and Arapaho Glacier, are considered true glaciers, the Aspen Times reports. Still, the tourism bureau's own page describes St. Mary's as historically home to snow year-round, which is precisely what made this year's near-total disappearance so notable to those who have hiked up to it for decades.
Getting There
The site sits at the end of an easy-to-moderate trail beginning at 10,428 feet in elevation, with a short climb to 10,848 feet at the base of the ice, according to the Clear Creek County Tourism Bureau. That accessibility is part of why St. Mary's became a rite of passage for Front Range hikers and a novelty for skiers chasing turns in the middle of summer, long before this year's dramatic shrinkage.
What's Driving the Melt
The retreat tracks with broader warming trends across Colorado's high country. University of Colorado Boulder professor Robert Anderson said glaciers and snowfields in Colorado, and across the world, are melting as global temperatures rise due to human fossil-fuel use, per the Aspen Times report. Worldwide, glaciers have shrunk every year for the past 39 years, with each of the last three decades showing steeper declines than the one before it, the outlet notes.
Colorado's own numbers tell a similar story. Statewide summers have warmed by roughly 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit on average since 1980, according to the Colorado Climate Center, as cited by the Aspen Times, and no summer in the state over the previous 17 years had been cooler than the 20th-century average. This year compounded that trend, arriving on the heels of record-low snowpack followed by a summer with above-average temperatures, according to the same report.
