2025 State of the Glaciers

We’re back again to wrap up the week with a bit of beta. It looks like the rain sets in today so you’ll have some time to study. We took a reconnaissance flight around the Duffey Lake Road and got some photos of the state of our local glaciers. Dive into the photo set at the link below. All of them are labelled but it’s pretty striking to see just how much ice mass has been lost. This should be a great start for you to think about glacial travel this winter and what the crevasse hazards are in certain areas.

Our takeaways?

• Lots of glaciers are getting pretty small and have minimal crevasse hazard. The big ones are still pretty gnarly though. We’ll be heads up for sure on the Anniversary, Matier, and Cayoosh North Glaciers, and most of the Spearhead.
• We’ve also noticed that glacial recession round cols and saddles means that entrances continue to be steeper and may become more corniced. It’s going to be importantly to be comfortable efficiently assessing cornices and entrances to lines.
• Watch out for changes due to rockfall events. Twin One Couloir for example had a significant event that may have changed the entrance.

Before we go, have you checked out our course listings for this season yet? We’ve got a bunch of avalanche refresher dates. These are something we recommend doing every season so if it’s been 5 or 10 years since you took that AST course, come check it out! We promise you’ll learn something new and definitely benefit from the practice repetitions.

Don’t see dates that work for you? Send us a note and we can try to make something happen.

See you soon from the Zenith Team!