Glaciers of the North Cascades

The North Cascades are home to the most glacial masses in the lower forty eight states. This part of the world is Gods country; the sheer beauty of the landscape is breathtaking. Most of the beauty of this land has been touched by ice. The North Cascades sit in the northern most part of Washington State. This region is filled with countless canyons and cirques, cliffs and knobs. Within the Cascades lie five

active volcanoes that tower over 12,000 feet above the valley floor. The tallest non-volcanic peak is over 9,000 feet. This massive area is prime for the building of ice and snow, key ingredients in glacial formation. Washington State is an excellent place to find glaciers as the relatively warm climate and abundant snowfall exceeds the loss of snow due to summer melt. Some the mountains in Washington that you will find glaciers are Mount Rainier, Mount Baker, Glacier Peak, and Mount Olympus.

At the high end of where more snow accumulates than is lost is called the accumulation zone this where glaciers are composed of fallen snow that is compressed after many years in thick ice masses and form when snow stays in one location long enough to be transformed into ice. Glaciers will form where the yearly snowfall is more than the loss of snow. Every year new layers of snow cover the previous years falls; the compression forces snow to recrystallize, forming grains the size of sugar. Slowly the grains grow larger and the air pockets between the grains gets smaller causing the snow to increase in density. After about two winters the ice turns into firn. As the glacier increases in weight it causes glacial movement. A glacier is unique because of their ability to move.

The lower region where the more snow is lost than is gained through snowfall and the ice flows downhill into the lower region is called the ablation zone, and in the summer there usually isn’t any snow, leaving the ice exposed. Between the two zones is a transition called the equilibrium line, where the annual accumulation equals ablation. This line is visible in the summer as the transition between the snow covered portion of the glacier and the lower ice section.

There are eleven classified types of glaciers in the word. There are only four found in the Cascades. The most common found here are, the mountain glaciers. They often form at high elevations where the temperature consistently touches below zero. These make up the bulk of the ice fields found here. The Valley glaciers are often spurred off of valley glaciers, they often look like a giant tongue, and they can be very long flowing down beyond the snow line and sometimes down to sea level.

Glaciers affect the landscape by the way they transport material and the way they carve land from beneath them, they will move broken rocks and soil and leaves behind a landscape that has been completely changed. The evidence that these massive ice flows have passed through this land is found all around. Another type of glacier that can be found in the North Cascades is the Cirque Glaciers, which is named for the bowl like hollows they occupy, called cirques. They are usually found high on mountainsides and tend to be wide rather than long. Cirques are created when glaciers erode backwards into mountainsides, creating rounded out hollows shaped like a shallow bowl. Nooksack Cirque, the headwaters of the North Fork of the Nooksack River, is a valley that has been scared by valley glaciers. The canyon walls have been rubbed smooth. This is the land of rocks; rocks left over from an age when glaciers covered the area like a blanket. As the vast sheets of ice slowly move down the canyon they scrape the walls of the canyon down to the bedrock. This rock is ground down to these smooth sheets found on the walls of Nooksack Cirque.

Today the only glacier left in Nooksack Cirque lives up to its name. A Cirque glacier hangs at the end of the valley. These rugged glaciers form low on a canyon avoiding the sunlight for most of the day. Most of the glaciers move rapidly down the side of the canyon wall. Some of these glaciers are completely covered with rock. It is possible to be standing on a glacier of this type with out knowing it. The lower portion of these glaciers is in sheet form. Vast flat expanses of ice formed as the wash from the glacier refreezes on top of itself. Hanging glaciers are very similar to the cirque glacier. These however are found much higher in elevation. The slopes of Jack Mt. and Ruby Mt. are home to four of these types of ice masses. The flat surfaces of ice often produce avalanches. As the winter snow accumulates and freezes to the surface ice of the glacier. The top layer remains soft and unstable.

Crevasses are found on the glaciers on the Lower 48 peaks like Mt. Rainier, Mt. Hood, Mt. Olympus and Mt. Adams. Crevasses often appear where a glacier scrapes against uneven valley walls or turns a corner. A crevasse is one of the treacherous things you will find on a glacier.

Which way are the glaciers in the Cascades heading? Are they shrinking, staying the same or growing? Spider Glaciers in the North Cascades has shown what glaciers in most parts of Washington are doing. A recent hike into the area by Andrea Imler it was noted that what once was a glacier is now a snowfield and in a few years it will be extinct. Another glacier in the same area, Lyman Glacier is estimated to have shrunk about one third of its former size and in the past 50 years has receded about 33 feet per year and in 30 to 50 years is predicted that it will completely disappear. The same is true for Nooksack Cirque. National Park Service ices are tracking glacier melting rates in the North Cascades National Parks by Jon Riedel who is a geologist, says the “ice is melting fast especially in the last 16 years. What the loss of glaciers means is that there will be less in the “glacial bank account” and the loss of about 400 billion gallons of water, that represents approximately one month of flow of the Skagit River, less snowpack means less water for fish and wildlife, hydropower, forest fire control and agriculture. Riedel feels this is because it is getting warmer and thinks it’s related to humans and their impact on the atmosphere. More a research scientist at University of Washington says, everything is now retreating, and the smaller glaciers are disappearing.” It is being said that the amount of snow falling in the Northwest is becoming less while the temperatures are rising. “The decline in snowfall in the Northwest has been the largest in the West, and it is clearly related to temperature, “ Mote said.

Glaciers in the Northwest tell their own stories of time and come in different sizes, shapes and color, but the one thing that all glaciers have in common is that they’re just one of the unique pieces of creation revealing God himself as Romans 1:20 says, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities -- his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”