April 12, 2025
Learning the basics with Colorado Mountain Club
In Spring 2025, I signed up for the Colorado Mountain Club’s excellent Alpine Climbing School. The “school” is a mix of zoom lectures, online materials, outdoor practice sessions, and, for the “team track”, group outings to practice technical skills on real objectives in the Rockies.
One of our first outings took place on the “St Mary’s Glacier” off of I-70 in the James Peak Wilderness. There we would practice basic skills with crampons and ice axes. For me the course would serve as a nice refresher, several years after a mountaineering seminar on Mount Rainier.
Heading Out
The day began with a short hike up from the (paid :/) parking area to the “glacier” itself. More on the scare-quotes later. After sliding around on the lower road for a bit, we donned our crampons at a sunny overlook. For us students, this outing was a chance to break in stiff mountaineering boots and new crampons.
After some fiddling and checks, we headed higher, onto the lower slopes of St Mary’s. Many seasoned instructors expressed surprise at how calm the weather was. St Mary’s has a reputation for being a bit of wind-funnel. This likely contributes to its year-round snow feature. Hiking in, I could definitely see evidence of scraggy pines warped and twisted by strong prevailing winds.
Are there really glaciers in Colorado?
As far as I can tell, yes. Yes, there are a handful of glaciers in Colorado. I am not a geologist or climatologist or any other sort of “ist” qualified to provide a definitive opinion on the matter. But you can find multiple professors referring to permanent snowfields in the Centennial State as glaciers (e.g. here, and here). The Arapaho Glacier is the largest of the bunch, rapidly retreating, but still exhibiting movement (its extent diminished by a factor of two over the 20th Century). The Arapaho Glacier spans less than 30 acres—vastly smaller than what you’d find in the Pacific Northwest.
Colorado has over a hundred mapped and catalogued permanent snow features, spanning from the Sangre de Cristo and San Juan Mountains to the northern Front Range. But most are definitely not glaciers. The dozen or so that, by hook or by crook, earned the name “glacier” are all in the northern Front Range. They exist at or above treeline, on northeastern slopes below cirques and steep ridges … exactly where prevailing winds can deposit the most snow, best-shielded from Colorado’s intense sunshine. Most of these dozen or so largest snowfields show compressed glacier ice. But very few of them show evidence of movement. All of them are rapidly retreating.
As for St Mary’s Glacier? It’s widely described as “semi-permanent snow field” meaning it no longer qualifies as a living glacier. It sits at a curiously low altitude of just 11,000 feet. But a combination of intense, funneled winds and a sheltered ravine allow large deposits of snow to persist year-round over an impressive extent.
Our outing occurred in early April, so snow at 11,000 feet was nothing particularly exciting. But I revisited the “glacier” in mid-August, and was stunned to see a solid half-mile run of skiable snow.
Practice Makes Perfect
We spent a few hours on the snowfield practicing various techniques with crampons and ice axes. We walked like ducks and dabbled with so-called French and German crampon techniques. And we kicked in steps on steeper slopes.
But the highlight of the day involved practicing “self-arrest” techniques. We would “fall” down a moderately steep slope in various positions and use our ice axes to arrest our momentum. Self-arrest is a last resort, and ideally something you never need to do “for real” in the mountains. But practicing in a low-consequence setting was safe and fun.
The positions started simple: on our stomach, feet first. But they grew progressively more intense. On our backs. Head first. On our back and head first (terrifying!).
About five years before this, I experienced an uncontrolled fall at Whistler Ski Area in Canada. Unarmed with self arrest skills (or a whippet, for that matter), I rapidly gained speed while waiting for a deceleration that seemingly never came. Eventually I tried slamming my ski boot into the snow. At that point I started “tomahawking” … flipping, head over heels, repeatedly. Then I spread my arms out to stop that, and began sliding head first on my stomach down the mountain. At that point I was in full on “Jesus take the wheel” mode. Luckily for me, I bottomed out on a shallower slope.
Practicing self arrest took me back to that day. But it also helped me gain confidence with the skills necessarily to avoid a repeat. Here’s hoping they’re never needed.
