If there is any doubt in your mind as to whether the glaciers are fast disappearing take a look at these pictures. It is estimated that within a couple of hundred years they will be gone and life on earth will be very different. Right now 70% of our fresh drinking water comes from glaciers. Witnessing the beauty and grandeur yet the vulnerability of these huge ice forms is both profound and sad. One elderly Indian gentleman on our bus said he had been to the Columbian Icefield 40 years ago and now he had come to witness the change. He was lame and walked with difficulty on the ice but with great sense of purpose he examined the entire area we had access to.

 Revisit 40 years later

With a total area of 200 kilometers, the Columbia Icefield is one of the largest masses of glacial ice outside the Artic Circle, surrounded by some of the highest mountains in the Canadian Rockies. When we first got on the Icefields Parkway, which by the way is touted as “the most beautiful road in the world” Mitch made an observation, “glaciers are just mountains with snow.” Well, here is the official definition of a glacier. It is where more snow falls in winter than melts each summer. As the snow gets thicker and heavier, it compacts into dense glacial ice that slowly flows downhill. Here the ice is 1000 meters thick and it is losing 30 meters a year.

Athabaska Glacier at sunset