{"id":878638,"date":"2026-10-11T14:18:28","date_gmt":"2026-10-11T14:18:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/878638\/"},"modified":"2026-10-11T14:18:28","modified_gmt":"2026-10-11T14:18:28","slug":"climate-advocates-hope-the-loss-of-st-marys-glacier-will-bring-urgency-to-issue-of-a-global-warming-and-disappearing-snowfields","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/878638\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate advocates hope the loss of St. Mary\u2019s Glacier will bring \u2018urgency\u2019 to issue of a global warming and disappearing snowfields"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a century, the snowfield known as St. Mary\u2019s Glacier has been a popular Colorado destination that captured the hearts and imaginations of thousands of visitors. Only an hour or so from Denver, the snowfield had, until this year<\/a>, always been known to last year-round, bringing sightseers as well as skiers and snowboarders<\/a> seeking summer turns<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Though it is called a glacier, scientists say St. Mary\u2019s hasn\u2019t been a true glacier \u2014 which is defined by ice so dense that it moves under the weight of Earth\u2019s gravity \u2014 anytime in recent history. After the ice melted completely for the first time in recorded history this September, St. Mary\u2019s isn\u2019t even a perennial snowfield.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, it\u2019s just a place \u2014 or perhaps, a spirit.<\/p>\n

Morgan Sierra Mae, who grew up less than an hour away in Evergreen, has visited the snowfield known as St. Mary\u2019s Glacier many times over the years.<\/p>\n

But on Friday, Oct. 2, Mae sat cross-legged on the rocks where the snowfield, now gone, had for so long resided. Her voice echoed through the rocky valley \u2014 a natural amphitheater carved over thousands of years by snow and ice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI melt away, I melt away, I melt away \u2014 don\u2019t forget my name,\u201d she sang, the strum of her guitar<\/a> accompanied by the constant babble of a mountain stream and the gentle whish of a cool breeze. \u201cI melt away, melt away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mae\u2019s song was part of a ceremony<\/a> to mourn the loss of the snowfield at St. Mary\u2019s, pay their respects and thank the \u201cglacier\u201d for all it offered \u2014 hosted last week by activists with Glacier Nation, an international climate movement, and The Green House Connection Center<\/a>, a Denver-based nonprofit.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho accompanies St. Mary\u2019s now? Who is with her? Who\u2019s listening and capturing the last drop of water, or what she wants to tell us?\u201d said Marcela Fernandez, the founder of Glacier Nation. \u201cWe believe that every time that a glacier or a perennial snowfield will disappear, what we should be able to collect are the lessons that we need to learn.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"A valley completely empty of snow for the first in at least 100 years stretches out behind Morgan Sierra Mae as she sings an original song on Friday, Oct. 2. Mae, who grew up in Evergreen, said art and music help her process the grief she feels for the ecological harm that industrialization and pollution have done to places like St. Mary\u2019s.Ryan Spencer\/Summit Daily News<\/p>\n

From Columbia to Colorado, glaciers are disappearing<\/p>\n

At the trailhead to St. Mary\u2019s, a small group of about eight people formed a circle, holding hands and lowering their heads in prayer, asking the mountain for safe passage \u2014 a tradition Fernandez said is practiced in her home country of Colombia.<\/p>\n

Fernandez quickly organized the ceremony at St. Mary\u2019s after seeing headlines about the snowfield\u2019s disappearance while at New York City Climate Week, the largest climate gathering in the world. She canceled plans to visit glaciers at Mount Shasta in California to come to Colorado and visit St. Mary\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cGlacier Nation is a movement around the world that wants to shine a light on the fact that glaciers are disappearing,\u201d Fernandez said. \u201cBut we shouldn\u2019t be nostalgic, apocalyptic, melancholic about it \u2014 we should be inspired to take action through restoration, through documentaries, making them (the glaciers) the influencers on social media.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Colombian first became alarmed about the loss of glaciers about a decade ago, when she read an article detailing how the tropical glaciers, which she hadn\u2019t even known existed in her home country, were disappearing. She began documenting the retreat of the glaciers through expeditions, documentaries and books<\/a> \u2014 and soon was raising awareness for the loss of glaciers all over the world.<\/p>\n

Colombia has already lost eight glaciers in the last century, leaving six remaining tropical glaciers, Fernandez said. All of Colombia\u2019s glaciers are expected to melt out within the next 30 years, some within the next few years, she said.<\/p>\n

According to scientists, Colorado\u2019s glaciers and snowfields won\u2019t be far behind. Worldwide, glaciers have shrunk every year for the past 39 years<\/a> \u2014 with each of the past three decades bringing bigger declines in ice than the decade before, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.<\/p>\n

Hiking up to St. Mary\u2019s, Fernandez carried a wooden box with small vials of water collected from disappearing glaciers and snowfields all over the world, including Colombia. The plan was to collect some of St. Mary\u2019s water to take with her around the world, and offer a small amount of the water from the Earth\u2019s other disappearing glaciers to St. Mary\u2019s in prayer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis will happen to Arapaho Glacier. This will happen to Isabel Glacier. They are in the countdown to be the next glaciers to disappear,\u201d Fernandez said, referring to two well-known snowfields in Colorado. \u201cHow are we going to prepare ourselves to say goodbye, but especially to say thank you?\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrews Glacier, a glacier in Rocky Mountain National Park, is pictured on Sept. 10, 2023.
Harlan Ulmer\/Colorado State University<\/p>\n

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Andrews Glacier, a glacier in Rocky Mountain National Park, is pictured up close on Oct. 11, 2025.
Harlan Ulmer\/Colorado State University<\/p>\n

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Andrews Glacier, a glacier in Rocky Mountain National Park, is pictured on Oct. 11, 2025.
Harlan Ulmer\/Colorado State University<\/p>\n

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Andrews Glacier, a glacier in Rocky Mountain National Park, is pictured on Sept. 12, 2026.
Harlan Ulmer\/Colorado State University<\/p>\n

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Andrews Glacier, a glacier in Rocky Mountain National Park, is pictured up close on Sept. 12, 2026.
Harlan Ulmer\/Colorado State University<\/p>\n

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Colorado\u2019s glaciers and snowfields<\/p>\n

Colorado State University Associate Professor of Geoscience Dan McGrath is a glaciologist who has studied glaciers all over the world, including in Greenland, Antarctica, Alaska, Asia and here in Colorado.<\/p>\n

Colorado\u2019s mountains were carved by glaciers, which form cirques, or bowl-shaped valleys through erosion and are especially common across the Front Range and in places like Rocky Mountain National Park, McGrath said. But it is somewhat of an open question whether Colorado has any true glaciers left.<\/p>\n

\u201cI generally throw out that Andrews and Arapaho are the two most glacier-like features that we have left in the state,\u201d McGrath said. \u201cYou would need to have evidence that they\u2019re flowing to indicate that they\u2019re still glaciers \u2014 and there have not been any kind of comprehensive surveys of their flow velocities or ice thickness that allows us to say definitively these are glaciers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. Geological Survey lists 16 glaciers in Colorado, but that includes places with perennial snowfields like St. Mary\u2019s that \u201cclearly have not been glaciers for a very long time and may no longer even have snow and ice in them,\u201d McGrath said. These glaciers have been melting since what is known as the \u201cLittle Ice Age\u201d from about 1750 to 1850, but until recent decades the melting had occurred slowly as winter snow accumulation and summer melt tended to balance out, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If any of Colorado\u2019s snowfields are still glaciers, McGrath said they\u2019re moving very, very slowly \u2014 especially as they melt at increasing rates, as the climate has steadily warmed due to human activities.<\/p>\n

Global temperatures have risen about 2 degrees Fahrenheit on average worldwide since 1850, with the warming trend increasing in recent decades, according to the National Atmospheric Administration. Statewide, the Climate Change in Colorado<\/a> report found that annual average temperatures warmed by 2.3 degrees between 1980 and 2022 and are expected to warm another 1-4 degrees by 2025.<\/p>\n

After Colorado faced its worst snowpack<\/a> and hottest summer on record<\/a>, the state\u2019s perennial snowfields have experienced rapid ice loss, and in cases like St. Mary\u2019s \u2014 total disappearance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not natural. The observed warming today is not natural,\u201d McGrath said. \u201cIt\u2019s anthropogenically driven and there\u2019s ample evidence that both the magnitude and the rate of warming that we\u2019re seeing today is not natural variability. It\u2019s not warming out of an ice age. This is very much an anthropogenic signal \u2014 and there\u2019s no question there.\u201d<\/p>\n

St. Vrain Glacier, located in the Indian Peaks Wilderness of the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests, is pictured on Sept. 1, 2024.
Harlan Ulmer\/Colorado State University<\/p>\n

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St. Vrain Glacier, located in the Indian Peaks Wilderness of the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests, is pictured on Sept. 6, 2026.
Harlan Ulmer\/Colorado State University<\/p>\n

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St. Vrain Glacier, located in the Indian Peaks Wilderness of the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests, is pictured on Aug. 31, 2025.
Harlan Ulmer\/Colorado State University<\/p>\n

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In 2017, McGrath and a research team dragged a radar system out to Andrews Glacier, in Rocky Mountain National Park, measuring an average thickness of 67 feet and a maximum thickness of about 156 feet. In the nine years since, Andrews Glacier has lost about 37 feet of ice \u2014 or roughly half of its volume, according to his data.<\/p>\n

Over the past six years, McGrath said his research has found that Colorado\u2019s remaining major glaciers have thinned by roughly 3 to 5.5 feet per year on average, yielding total changes in thickness of 17 to 34 feet over that time.<\/p>\n

Amid the record-hot summer, he said the researchers found that Andrews Glacier thinned by almost 12.5 feet, Arapaho Glacier by almost 10 feet and Isabel Glacier by almost 7 feet \u2014 in just a single season.<\/p>\n

While St. Mary\u2019s is one of the first of Colorado\u2019s glaciers to melt out completely, it won\u2019t be the last.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are many others that are not far behind and will likely fully melt out in the coming years to decades,\u201d McGrath said. \u201cIf you extrapolate the thinning rates, say over the last six years, there\u2019s not a long lifespan for many of these features.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tom Bellinger, a professor of environmental science at Metropolitan State University of Denver with a background as a hydrologist, has predicted that Colorado\u2019s glaciers and snowfields could disappear by 2080 or the end of the century at latest.<\/p>\n

Bellinger said that\u2019s worrying, given that glaciers are natural reservoirs of water and their disappearance will only drive a drier future in Colorado and the West, which is already facing crisis-level shortages of water.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really a warning sign to us,\u201d he said. \u201cThese glaciers are important because they do melt during the summer and produce water downstream. So they do feed a lot of our rivers and groundwater during the hot summer months.\u201d<\/p>\n

McGrath said his research indicates the glaciers may not last another half century \u2014 and some could disappear entirely within the next decades or two.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to pinpoint a year, or even a decade necessarily, because of the variability in the climate system,\u201d McGrath said. \u201cBut I think the recent past has taught us that you can lose a substantial volume of ice in a short period of time \u2014 that roughly 50% has been lost in a decade.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Marcela Fernandez, Morgan Sierra Mae and other activists gather on a rock surrounded by St. Mary\u2019s Lake. In the foreground, a bottle holds water offered in prayer to the glacier and snowfield that once occupied the area.Ryan Spencer\/Summit Daily News<\/p>\n

St. Mary\u2019s is 35 miles from the country\u2019s most polluted zip code\u00a0<\/p>\n

Joined by three other activists, Fernandez climbed across a log to a rock surrounded by St. Mary\u2019s Lake \u2014 an alpine lake that had long been fed by the snowfield \u2014 to collect a sample of the water.<\/p>\n

Holding each other on the rock, the activists sang a song. Some cried. Some splashed themselves with the ice-cold water or waded into the lake barefoot. Each offered a prayer in their own way, out loud or in silence.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeday we will be the ancestors. Someday it\u2019s our shoulders that the generations will be standing on,\u201d said Angelique Rodriguez, who has Ute and Apache ancestry and leads Water-Unite<\/a>, a project that centers around the importance of water, both spiritually and scientifically, to life.<\/p>\n

\"\"The valley once occupied by St. Mary\u2019s Glacier is empty of snow and ice on Friday, Oct. 2. With a strong winter the snowfield could return, and perhaps even last through an entire summer again in the coming years, but amid climate change it is more likely to dry up completely as temperatures warm in Colorado, and across the globe, according to scientists.Ryan Spencer\/Summit Daily News<\/p>\n

Mae said she and other activists with the Green House Connection Center are aiming to bring awareness to the \u201cindustrial harm\u201d that humans are causing the world. She noted that the nonprofit is located in the 80216 zip code, which is one of the most polluted zip codes in the U.S.<\/a> due to the SunCor Energy Refinery in Commerce City and Superfund sites from past industrial activity. A new major data center is also planned for the area<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 80216 zip code is less than 35 miles from St. Mary\u2019s Glacier.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel that St. Mary\u2019s brings awareness of the urgency. It is a place where people cannot deny that it\u2019s gone because they skied, they walked, they\u2019ve been through here. So this is not imagination,\u201d Fernandez said. \u201cIf there are people out there denying climate change, or if there\u2019s skepticism about what\u2019s going on \u2014 I think this place has a lot to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Columbian pointed up the hill at the snowless valley.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you see these rocks, these are moraines \u2014 these are basically the cemetery of St. Mary\u2019s,\u201d she said. \u201cBut her spirit is everywhere, right?\u201d<\/p>\n