Let's Talk Glaciers:

Glaciers play a critical role in our climate systems, hydrological cycles, and global water resources – to say nothing of how we value them as alpinists!

With repeat photography as muse, the following vignettes suggest a few of the many ways we, as mountaineers, climbers, hikers, skiers, sky-runners – any who love to play, stay, and work in the mountains – might use 2025 to tell our own stories of ice and snow.

The world needs to hear from us – let's use 2025 to kick-start the conversation!

Glaciers can tell important climate change stories – stories that resonate with those in and beyond the mountaineering community. So a year about glaciers makes sense. But glaciers’ preservation? Even if we stopped all Green House Gas (GHG) emissions today many of our glaciers would still disappear. Models indicate the Athabasca, featured here,  will be gone by 2100 .

Therefore, I suggest that a key purpose of the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation is for us to hold space for glaciers as a symbol of why we need to take and call for climate action – especially in the mountains.

The big question – “what actions might we, as individuals or as organizations, take over the next year to help glaciers, snow, and ice tell their stories”? How can we honour them, educate people about their importance, advocate for them, and – perhaps most importantly – celebrate their very existence!

In helping glaciers find their voices maybe we should be asking: “If not us, who? If not now, when”?

It is such a privilege to be able to experience these places. Historic or modern, our stories and images are as compelling today as they were a century ago.

At 3954 m (12,972 ft) Mt Robson is the highest mountain in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Today it is the capstone of British Columbia’s stunning Mt Robson Provincial Park.

The black and white image was taken in 1911 by Arthur Wheeler, a co-founder of the Alpine Club of Canada. He took these and many more to help him make topographic maps of this hitherto uncharted area.

100 years later, almost to the day (late August) the  Mountain Legacy Project  repeated Wheeler’s shots. Powerful images then and powerful images now – especially when shown side-by-side like this.

Maybe we can look back to the early days of climbing for inspiration around the challenging task of educating and advocating for glaciers, snow, and ice.  

At 3519 m (11,545 ft) this is the highest peak in British Columbia’s storied Selkirk Mountains. It is remote even by today’s standards. Back in 1910 when mountaineer and explorer Howard Palmer took this photo it was his second time into the area. It would not be his last. He, along with Ed Holway, Edward Feuz Jr., and Rudolph Aemmer were finally successful in summiting Sir Sandford in 1912.

Palmer’s book,  Mountaineering and Exploration in the Selkirks , written in 1914 is a truly absorbing read – perhaps one of the best ever published on mountaineering in Canada.

In 1910 Palmer and company took this photo hoping it would help them unlock some of the secrets of the route to the summit. I suspect, were he here today, Palmer would be quite surprised at the changes in this view.

The modern photo, repeated in 2019 by David P. Jones, had a few difficulties of its own – the obvious one being that the Silvertip Glacier, where Palmer stood in 1910, was gone. David would have had to hang 50 metres or more up in the air to get the photo! Instead he ascended a little way up the valley walls and lined up the shot as best he could.

Today’s ACC  Ben Ferris / Great Cairn Hut  can be seen in the lower centre-right of the colour photo. Imaging thinking of locating a hut in this amazing region back in 1910 – you'd have to shift a lot of ice!

Science, glaciers, and climbers have a long relationship. Mt. Logan – the highest mountain in Canada – is famous for glacier studies.

Logan was first climbed in 1925 by a joint  Alpine Club of Canada / American Alpine Club  expedition. The route up was long and arduous back then. It is still a major undertaking today.

In 2021 a team began the two-year process to drill for Canada’s oldest ice core high on the Mt Logan plateau glacier. The 2021 team was made up of  Alison Criscitiello  (lead) and  Zac Robinson  from the University of Alberta,  Rebecca Haspel , a geologist from Calgary, and  Toby Harper-Merrett , a Montreal-based climber and vice-president of the Alpine Club of Canada. They would lay the groundwork. The actual drilling would take place in 2022.

The process was a success – at 327 m long and looking back 30,000 years the ice core from Mt Logan is the longest and most complete ever taken from a high-altitude glacier. It is also the oldest nonpolar ice core in the world. Read more about it in Zac’s Canadian Geographic story  Last Icy Stand  and Alison’s  New Mt Logan Icecore  in the Alpine Club of Canada's State of the Mountains Report.

 The 1925 team had deteriorating summit conditions, so in 2021 when Zac was on the peak, he repeated André Roche’s image instead. In 1950, 25 years after the ACC/AAC party, Roche and his Swiss team were the second group to reach the summit.

More photos in this area at  Mountain Legacy Explorer .

How can we honour the presence of Indigenous Peoples on snow/ice or in the mountains?

This is the beautiful Valley of the 10 Peaks in what today is Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada. The names on the peaks seen here are those given in 1894 by explorers Samuel Allen, Walter Wilcox, and their Nakoda guide Enoch Wildman. The names are a bit prosaic – they represent the numbers 1 (Wazi) to 10 (Wîkchemnâ) in Stoney Nakoda.

If you look on maps  or photos  today only three, Tonsa [Ktûtha], Neptuak [Nâpchuwîk], and Wenkchemna [Wîkchemnâ] have retained names that look back at their Stoney Nakoda origins. The change to Ktûtha, Nâpchuwîk, and Wîkchemnâ – indeed all the names listed here – better reflects the spoken and written Stoney Nakoda language.

More photos from this location at  Mountain Legacy Explorer .

Revisit past trips with a new eye – it can deepen the adventure.

The older image, taken in October, 1977, was from a weekend trip to Vancouver Island’s Comox Glacier. It is the biggest glacier on Vancouver Island,  but scientists think it will be gone by mid-century  . Dave Suttill, a long-time Alpine Club of Canada member, took the 1977 photo.

45 years later we mounted the same trip. We had a wonderful time finding the same photo locations, hearing Dave's stories about the 1977 trip, and noticing both change and similarities in the area. Adding the repeat photography made this trip an especially rich experience.

More photos – including all the repeats – and stories from the trip are available online at  BC Out of Doors .

Perhaps the 2025 International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation is the year to commit to adding a greater understanding of how glaciers work to our personal skill set?

In 2025 the GMC will be held in the Hatteras Group in British Columbia's Northern Purcell range.  Week 5 will feature an on-site cryosphere (referring to water in any of its frozen forms – including glaciers) specialist  who will deepen everyone's knowledge and encourage connectivity with these phenomenal environments.

Consider honouring the past by looking at an “old friend” through new eyes.

In this case my “old friend” is the Peyto Glacier in Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada. This glacier will probably be gone within the decade. Still, the historic and modern images tell stories so powerful words just get in the way.

My partner in this trip was Lael Parrott, another long-time ACC member. Afterwards we decided to write an article focused on these and other images from the area. We published it in the 2023  State of the Mountains Report  as a  photo-essay . We simply let the photos speak for this famous glacier and the icefields above it.

We chose to do repeat photography, but we could have done other things just as easily. We could have been down on the glacial out wash plain looking at plants, or bouldering in newly exposed rock, maybe exploring new new glacial margins, even taking a (bracing!) dip in Peyto Lake – anything to help deepen our understanding of this “old friend”. 

More photos from this location at  Mountain Legacy Explorer .

Engage friends and climbing partners in thinking and talking about glaciers, snow, and ice. Once their interest is piqued, plan a cryosphere (the frozen part of Earth, including snow, ice, and frozen ground) project.

Recently the  Vancouver Island section  of the ACC put on a week-long trip to the Campbell Icefield in British Columbia’s Rocky Mountains. While there I showed some historic images of the area. The photos were taken in 1918 by surveyor Arthur Wheeler, Alan Campbell (yes, the glacier, close-by mountain, and icefield is named for him), and Lee Cameron. The pictures were used to help make topographic maps of the area. Interest in our party was high to stand where the surveyors stood and repeat the photos.

We had an exceptional day of route finding and climbing to reach the location. The repeat photography, along with looking at glacial dynamics and botanizing a recently deglaciated moraine, only added to the trip’s interest.

This area continues to get heavy and consistent snowfall – it is world famous as a backcountry skiing destination – so we were staggered to see the difference in snow and ice. I later extended the reach of these photos and the stories they tell with online discussions and in-person presentations.

With photos like the historic/modern pair shown here, our team of climbers “dropped a pebble in a pond” – the ripples are expanding outward still.  More repeat images  from this area.

Take time to consider glaciers, snow, and ice as part of a broader mountain landscape.

These photos show Mt Assiniboine and its glacier. Today this is in the heart of British Columbia’s Mt Assiniboine Provincial Park. It wasn’t a park back in1913 when Wheeler was here working as a mapping surveyor. Once again he was using photography to help him create topographic maps of the area.

Interestingly, he really didn’t need the image featured here to make his maps – he had already taken photos of the same view from a much better vantage point above. I suspect he, like so many of us, was simply struck with the integrated beauty of place this photo shows so well.

More photos from this location at  Mountain Legacy Explorer .

Maybe you have stories featuring ice and snow from someplace like this? Why not consider sharing them with the UIAA’s International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation working group? Reach out to  mountainprotection@theuiaa.org  to participate.

But perhaps the most important thing we, as mountain enthusiasts, can do for the  2025 International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation  is resolve to celebrate glaciers, snow and ice in person – and then tell the world how important they are and what is at stake!

This UIAA slogan is sums it up well:

For the climbers, for the mountains, for the world