Cascade snowpack - glaciers don't lie

Over in the thread about decreasing snowfall at Snoqualmie Pass, I wrote:

My favorite benchmark to judge the decline of the Cascade snowpack is to look at the glaciers.

I recently digitized a photo album donated to the Mountaineers by Donn Venema. The album depicts a 1908 climb of Mt Rainier by Donn's grandfather, Harry Venema. Donn wrote about his grandfather's climb in the 2008 Northwest Mountaineering Journal:

www.alpenglow.org/nwmj/08/081_Rainier100.html

You can see the entire PDF album by searching for "Venema" on the Mountaineers Archives collections page:

mountaineers.atlassian.net/wiki/display/ARCH/Collections

The album contains photos of the Nisqually Glacier snout. 1908 was the year that the road was completed to the current site of the Nisqually Glacier bridge. At the time, it was advertised as the first road in the U.S. to reach a glacier. I think the following photo was taken from near the road:



The album also contains a 1907 postcard by L.G. Linkletter, shown below:



I remember the glacier being much closer to the bridge when I visited Rainier as a kid. I'm sure many of you do too.

If anyone has more interesting photos of glaciers, feel free to post them.

Below is a photo of the Eliot Glacier on Mt Hood.  On the left is a photo taken by Harry Fielding Reid in 1901.  Though not the exact vantage point, the right photo is one I took in 2006.  It provides a bit of interesting perspective on how the glacier has changed over time, especially the volume at the lower elevations.



I haven't paid much attention to snowpack statistics, but a friend who is an avid skier and a retired meteorologist has indicated that the amount of snowfall in the Oregon cascades has been fairly constant over time (last 100 years), but rising summer temperatures, especially warmer night time temperatures, have directly impacted glacial retreat in the PNW.

Thanks for posting, Lowell!  There are several old photos of the Nisqually Glacier terminus in a TNT article slideshow last year:
www.thenewstribune.com/2014/12/21/355156...historic-images.html

Other photos show more extensive ice coverage nearby, but my favorite is the ice cream stand! 

I enjoyed the complete article, which included a lot about the glaciers (I'm sure many of you have seen it):
www.thenewstribune.com/static/pages/rainier/

There are several old photos of the Nisqually Glacier terminus in a TNT article slideshow last year:
www.thenewstribune.com/2014/12/21/355156...historic-images.html

Those are some great photos, Gary!

Those are some great photos

A century of glacial recession is dramatically illustrated in photo #16 of the TNT slideshow:  "Nature Coasting on Paradise Glacier".  Correcting for the tilted framing (leaning guide), I believe the skyline is Cowlitz Rock.  Note the banded ogives and that several hundred feet of ice buries today's lower rock outcrops around the 'Ice Caves' valley.  Looking east from upper Mazama Ridge in summer, one can see the (~1700AD) glacial trimline of this main lobe on Stevens Ridge above Fairy Falls.  There was also a smaller lobe that overtopped the low Puget-Columbia hydrographic divide (~ 1 km N of Stevens-Van Trump Memorial) and fed the headwaters of Paradise River for a time.