Travels in Cascadia: Acrophobia, Glacierlets, and "Summer" in Whistler, B.C.

Inuksuk near the top of Whistler Mountain. See the note at the end of the post.

Acrophobia, the fear of heights, is an interesting phenomenon. I don't have it, I swear. I have no trouble standing on cliff edges, or climbing up in trees, or flying. Gondolas don't bother me. There are variations and subcategories though. I can stand on a high cliff and look over the edge, but I cannot abide watching someone else do it, especially my students. And I really don't like dangling.

There are lots of creepy heebie-jeebie moments in movies, like "Here's Johnny!", or "the call is coming from inside the house", but none gives me heart palpitations like the opening scene of "Cliffhanger" when Sylvester Stallone is trying to save a young women dangling from a rope over a vast chasm. She falls unfortunately, and I always drop the popcorn while covering my eyes. And then there is that first scene from "Vertical Limit", when not one, but three people fell down the cliff.

In my youth (roughly the ages 12 through 60 years) I was a regular peak bagger and rock clamberer. But I couldn't handle dangling from a rope. I only feel comfortable with solid rock or flooring under my feet. I rappelled down a cliff just once, I've never parachuted or gone hang-gliding, and rides at amusement parks that mimic the experience have never held any appeal for me.

This fact that I hate dangling is the background to today's description of our exploration of British Columbia that we undertook last summer in July. It's because I had to dangle over a cliff in order to see something I really wanted to see: a glacier from above.

Whistler Mountain from the Roundhouse Lodge at the top of the Whistler Gondola.

We were well into our trip by the time we reached the town of Whistler, BC. We had explored the Olympic Peninsula, parts of Vancouver Island, crossed the Strait of Georgia, and wandered for days in Howe Sound, the southernmost fjord on the west coast of North America. We drove there on a modern highway, much of which was stapled onto cliffs of Howe Sound. Before the highway was completed (in the 1960s) and improved and widened in the early 2000s (in preparation for the Winter Olympics of 2010), Whistler was an isolated logging community. Today it is a busy recreational center, winter and summer.

On the day we arrived in town it was a little hard to tell which season it was...it was July and it was cold and rainy. It could hardly be anything different (under the rules of Murphy's Law) since our weather thus far had been rather nice, and I was looking forward to seeing the spectacular alpine scenery around Whistler (my previous two visits had been in poor weather as well). We had scheduled only a few activities in the morning so the students could do some exploring on their own during the long afternoon.

The Peak Express ski lift leading to the summit of Whistler Mountain

As a major winter recreation site, the mountainsides are draped with all manner of gondolas and ski lifts, as well as some incredibly long ziplines. A single ticket provided access to most of the gondolas and the ski lifts that were running in the summer, so I headed up the Whistler Gondola, with the intention of riding and walking over a glacier for the first time (I've been to Athabasca Glacier, but not over it). There was also something up there called the Cloudraker Skybridge and the Raven's Eye that sounded worth checking out.

So this is where we talk about acrophobia. I had no problem with the gondola ride at all. It's in an enclosed space with seats and a floor and all that. But when I got out at the Roundhouse Lodge at 6,069 feet, I found that I was still 1,100 feet below the summit of Whistler Mountain. And I would have to get their via...a ski lift. A spindly rickety dangling ski lift. I know all you skiers out there are used to these things, but I'm not. I don't like them. But it was the only way to get to the top of Whistler Mountain within our time constraints, so I hiked over to the base of the cliff and loaded myself onto the lift.

The Cloudraker Skybridge and Raven's Eye (on the far right). The "snow" is actually the top of a glacier.

There are a few places I've been that feel like no human should really be there. At the very bottom of a huge open-pit mine, for instance. One looks at the rocks exposed for the first time in millions or billions of years, and it just doesn't feel comfortable. Standing two feet from flowing lava. And dangling from a thin cable over a cliff of crumbling rock. It just didn't feel right. But there I was, and soon I reached the top no worse for the wear.

Walking out onto the Cloudraker Skybridge. The Raven's Eye is in the distance, upper left.

Once I was on solid ground again I felt better. I walked over to the Skybridge and crossed it several times. It didn't bother me one bit, and I had a great view down the small glacier beneath my feet. Glacier is perhaps a strong word for what this icefield was. A glacier is defined mainly as a mass of ice large enough to flow under the influence of gravity, and this one qualified, but I suspect the rate of movement is on the order of a few inches or feet per year. The term glacierlet is sometimes applied to these ice fields (most Sierra Nevada glaciers are of about this magnitude in size).

It was immediately clear that this glacier was only a shadow of its former self. On the slope far below I could make out a barren ridge surrounding a turquoise lakelet with a couple of huge boulders. This was a very young terminal moraine, so young that plants had not had a chance to grow. The glacier ended down there only a hundred or so years ago. Although there is snow in the lower reaches, the actual glacier ends today hundreds of feet above the lake.

Terminal moraine and moraine lake at the former end of the glacier at Whistler Mountain.

The true size of the glacier today can be seen in a satellite image taken in the late summer when nearly all of the snow (but not glacial ice) has melted away (below). The loss of glacial ice is a worldwide phenomena indicating that the global climate is warming. When these glaciers disappear, their loss will have serious ramifications for the regional ecosystem. The glaciers serve as a dependable year-round water source for alpine creeks, and when that disappears, so will the animals and plants that are dependent on that water. They don't have anywhere else to retreat to.

Meanwhile, I had one more challenge. As physics tells us, what goes up must come down, and I had been procrastinating, walking around the nature trails around the peak of Whistler Mountain. I was out of time, and was going to have to take the ski lift back down. I'm glad no one was with me, because I was whimpering "oh, sh*t" over and over as the ski lift chair tipped over the edge of the void.

The arete on the east side of the glacier. The ski lift went right over it.

The scenery gave me something else to concentrate on, so I snapped lots and lots of mostly useless pictures, but I did get a decent perspective on the terminal moraine and small moraine lake behind it. The turquoise color is caused by clay-sized particles suspended in the water, derived from the grinding action of the glacier on the rocks at its base. An arete is a sharp jagged ridge that divides glacial valleys. The ski lift carried me right over the top of it.

You'll all be happy to know that I gathered myself together and was not whimpering by the time I reached the bottom of the lift.

In the end, the lousy weather mostly kept me from seeing the spectacular alpine scenery that surrounds Whistler. On the other hand I was able to see a glacier up close, and learned to live with my subtle form of acrophobia.

Google Earth image of the small glacier at Whistler Mountain. The cirque is the bowl-shaped valley where the glacier originates. The skybridge traverses the upper end of the cirque.

The Inuksuk at the beginning of the post was the icon of the 2010 Winter Olympics that were held in Vancouver and Whistler. The stone men have been a part of Inuit and other Arctic cultures for thousands of years. The use of the Inuksuk at the winter games was somewhat controversial, as no Inuits ever lived within hundreds of miles of the site of the games. The local First Nations people were the Squamish and Lil'wat.

Whistler refers to the Hoary Marmots found in the region. I saw one of them at the Roundhouse Lodge when I got back from the mountain.

Northern Convergence: The Incredible Lakes and Glaciers of Banff National Park

Moraine Lake in Banff National Park. Beautiful, but crowded! It's tourist central, along with nearby Lake Louise.

So...what do you get when you take incredibly thick layers of limestone, sandstone and shale that were deposited on the ancient edge of a continent and press them together really hard? Very long story short, you get the Canadian Rockies and Banff National Park. The compression occurred because of the convergent forces around the subduction zone on the west coast of North America during the last 200 million years. In the region of the Rockies, slab after slab of sedimentary rock was pushed up and over the adjacent slabs, producing a rugged landscape of thrust faults and linear ranges of limestone  and sandstone (see the diagram below).

Structure of the Canadian Rockies, courtesy of an interpretive sign at Moraine Lake (I was too lazy to try and sketch it out)

Add in the effect of widespread glaciation during the geologically recent ice ages (the last two million years), and you get a spectacular landscape of jagged rocky peaks and beautiful turquoise lakes. Our field class had been spending most of the day in equally beautiful Yoho National Park, but as the shadows lengthened in the afternoon we headed over Kicking Horse Pass into Banff National Park. Our first stop was Moraine Lake, a lake that may or may not have a moraine.

Moraines are piles and ridges of glacial debris (till) that form around the margins and edges (and sometimes the interior of) alpine glaciers. Moraine Lake, one of the epicenters of tourist activity at Banff, has a most unusual looking moraine. The rocks are almost uniformly large and slabby as if they came from a single source area or cliff. They don't look like a typical moraine at all.

The "moraine" at Moraine Lake. It is more likely a rockfall deposit that may or may not have been transported to the terminus by the movement of glacial ice.

It looks like the feature is either a landslide from the adjacent cliff that blocked off and dammed the lake, or it is a landslide that fell onto the glacier somewhere upstream and was slowly carried to the end of the glacier where it formed into the distinctive mass as the ice melted away.

Small glacier above Moraine Lake

Small glaciers clung to the high peaks above us. The glacier in the picture above ended at a cliff. As it moves forward, large chunks of glacial ice will tumble down the steep slopes.

Our evening was spent in a hotel with a glorious view of the peaks above the Banff Townsite. So what did we spend our time doing? Laundry, of course! The view provides a marvelous perspective down the length of the strike valleys carved out along the thrust faults that pushed these mountains upwards.

The next day we started north on the Icefields Parkway to get up close and personal with some glaciers and the lakes that have made Banff and Jasper such famous parks. Our first stop was at Bow Lake and Bow Glacier. Like many others, Bow Glacier has been retreating since the late 1800s, and until around 1930 the glacier extended over the cliff. Today there is a prominent hanging valley and waterfall where the glacier once flowed. Total retreat has been about 0.6 miles.

Bow Lake was otherworldly in the calm conditions of the morning. We passed it later in the day and with the winds having picked up, it was completely different. The lake does not have the distinctive turquoise color of most glacial lakes, which arises from the very fine flour-like clay that remains suspended in the water. Since the early 1930s there has been a small tarn (glacially carved lake) at the base of the glacier that has been capturing the sediments before they can flow down into the larger lake.

Bow Lake on the Icefields Parkway in Banff National Park

Later in the day we had a look at one of the most iconic views in all of Banff National Park, that of Peyto Lake (and the Peyto glacier). The lake is justly famous for the turquoise color, which as mentioned above is from finely ground silt and clay suspended in the water. The setting is made all the more grand from the steep rugged cliffs and the long linear strike valley in the distance.

Looking west we could see the Peyto Glacier that feeds the lake. Like Bow Lake, the glacier has retreated during the last century by the same amount, about 0.6 miles. The glacier is actually a composite of two glaciers that flowed together. The black line of debris in the center is the place where the glaciers joined, forming a debris line called a medial moraine.

The lakes and glaciers at a distance are wonderful to see, but we were after a more intimate experience with the glacial ice. Our goal for the day was the Columbia Icefield and a stroll around the base of the park's most accessible glacier, Athabasca. That will be the subject of a near-future post.

If the pace of posting has seemed low of late, that would be because I'm in the midst of field trip season, with a trip to the eastern Sierra Nevada a week and a half ago, a trip to Lake Tahoe last weekend, and a trip starting tomorrow to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. The trips keep me busy, but also provide a lot of material to post! See you again on Monday or Tuesday!

See Glacier Before the Glaciers are Gone; See Yellowstone Before the Supervolcano Blows: Take a Geology Field Course This Summer

There was a time when the our national parks seemed like unchangeable icons and symbols. They were protected from development, they were reservoirs of intact ecosystems and clean water and air, and a family might have told stories of camping in the olden days of the 30's and 40's, and until recently one could reasonably expect to have a similar experience in the current era. Times are changing, however. Glaciers are disappearing from Glacier National Park, forests and wildlife are transforming in parks like Yellowstone and Yosemite as the climate warms, and some parks are becoming isolated islands in seas of urban development. Views in parks like Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon and Sequoia are increasingly obscured by air pollution. Our orphaned parks, the state parks, are being being closed for lack of funding. Others face privatization. It's a shame that the best idea our country ever had is being in some ways abandoned. I would love to think that we are coming up with better ways of caring for our national and state treasures, but I am not optimistic. When budget cuts come, the parks get cut first.
I guess this is an odd way to extend an invitation! But if you live in the Modesto region (or are willing to make some major travel arrangements), we would like to invite you to travel with us on an exploration of some of our country's most precious places: the Pacific Northwest and the Northern Rocky Mountains. I'm working with our anthropology professor to offer a dyad class on the archaeology and geology of nine national parks and monuments (Lava Beds, Crater Lake, Newberry Crater, Mt. Rainier, Glacier, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Great Basin, Yosemite) as well as a multitude of state parks and other sites. And you can get three units of semester credit doing something interesting!
That's not to say there will be no work...you have to learn stuff, and demonstrate it too us! And it is a camping excursion, with all the possibilities of rain, snow, sun, wind and critters. On the other hand, there will be plenty of opportunities to hike, to see starlight skies and wonderful sunsets, and to have a multitude of unforgettable and unique experiences. If you are interested, see the press release below for more information. We are having an informational meeting on Monday if you live nearby. We can provide info by e-mail if you can't come to the meeting.

MJC offers new Geology and Archaeology summer field studies class

(Modesto, CA) — Modesto Junior College is offering a unique summer field studies course entitled Geology and Archaeology of the Pacific Northwest and Northern Rocky Mountains held June 15 to June 30, 2011. Anyone interested in enrolling in this special learning opportunity is invited to attend the orientation meeting on Monday, May 23 at 7 p.m. in Science 132 on East Campus.

The course will provide an exploration of Yellowstone, Crater Lake, Grand Tetons and Glacier National Parks, and Mount St. Helens and Lava Beds National Monuments. Participants will also have the chance to visit and discover some less familiar spots that provide evidence of the geological and human history of the region, including Great Basin National Park, Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park, Fossil Butte National Monument, and Newberry Crater.

The new joint class is being taught by Professor of Anthropology Susan Kerr and Professor of Geology Garry Hayes and students will earn 3 semester units in either Geology 174 or Anthropology 174. A background is not required in either of these subjects. Basic principles will be developed prior to and during the course, and participation will benefit anyone interested in a career in teaching, park management and rangering, or science.

The group will camp in the parks and monuments and the $650 class fee includes all transportation, camping fees, park admission fees, and food. A registration fee of $26 per unit is additional, as are other applicable fees for those not already enrolled as an MJC student. Anyone wishing to register for the class who is not already enrolled as an MJC student must submit an application online at www.mjc.edu.

For additional information email Susan Kerr at kerrs@mjc.edu or Garry Hayes hayesg@mjc.edu or visit http://virtual.yosemite.cc.ca.us/ghayes/serv06.htm for a complete itinerary.