ATHABASCA GLACIER
I did a 3 hour guided walk on this glacier, part of the massive Columbia Ice fields north of Lake Louise. If any of you still doubt global warming, go see a glacier. The proof is undisputable, and scary how quickly it is happening. I was the only American on the tour and chose to stay pretty quiet what with how we are backpedaling on the agreements we had already made on this issue.
One of the amazing facts is that the ice I was standing on was hundreds of years old, maybe more, due to the fact that the newer ice had melted leaving this very old ice now at the surface.
The drive up the Icefields parkway was astounding beautiful. It is just one breath taking view after another for the 70 miles that I drove.
Starting out
Rivers within the glacier
Graphic proof. There are two pieces of bright green tape around this pole. The one on the right about 2′ above the current snow line was done June 1st. 11 days before my visit. The glacier here is at least 1/2 mile wide and has melted nearly 2 feet in 11 days! Equally astounding is the green higher up about at the line of the edge of the glacier in this shot. It is from October 2016, 9 months ago! If I knew how to tweet, maybe I could tweet this to Trump who seems unsure about whether global warming is occurring.
Our guide said that this had just opened up in the past few days. It is about 5′ in diameter.
We each refilled our water bottles here. Talk about fresh, cold ice water! This person lives in Singapore. What a different place this must have been for him!
The view further up. We stopped here, about 1/3 of the way up. Over the top becomes the Columbia ice fields. These in total are the largest glacier areas south of the polar circle.
The proof I was there shot.
Our group heading down
Along the approach road to the base of the glacier were various year markers. Here is he end of it as of 1942. At least 3/4 of a mile from where it is now.