Results of the Heat Dome

Over the past eight days I’ve been on the north glacier of Mt Athabasca four times, climbing either Mt Athabasca itself or Boundary Peak. In that time we have lost almost 1.5 m of snow on the glacier (as measured by probing). Yes, 150 cm of snow in a little over a week in June. It’s like we skipped July and fast forwarded straight into August. Although the upper part of the glacier still seems to have decent coverage, accessing the toe is more difficult now with bare ice and the lower crevasses are harder to negotiate. All ice faces in the area are very dry with lots of rock showing and look unappealing to me.