The Horstman Glacier is a glacier located on Blackcomb Peak in Garibaldi Provincial Park. During the ski season at Whistler Blackcomb Ski Resort, it is used for skiing and snow riding. It is one of two glaciers in North America used for summer skiing and riding. [1]
The Horstman Glacier is the site of a pilot project developing methods to preserve glaciers.
The Horstman glacier has receded substantially, with conditions deteriorating. [2] In 2020 the Horstman T-bar, a ski lift at Whistler Blackcomb operating since 1987, was closed down as the glacier receded. [4]
The retreat of glaciers like the Horstman is mostly attributed to global warming [5] and local changes as a result of rising temperature also furthering the process. [6] Glacier recession is accelerating worldwide. [7] [8]
A glacier is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. Glaciers slowly deform and flow under stresses induced by their weight, creating crevasses, seracs, and other distinguishing features. They also abrade rock and debris from their substrate to create landforms such as cirques, moraines, or fjords. Glaciers form only on land and are distinct from the much thinner sea ice and lake ice that forms on the surface of bodies of water.
Snow comprises individual ice crystals that grow while suspended in the atmosphere—usually within clouds—and then fall, accumulating on the ground where they undergo further changes. It consists of frozen crystalline water throughout its life cycle, starting when, under suitable conditions, the ice crystals form in the atmosphere, increase to millimeter size, precipitate and accumulate on surfaces, then metamorphose in place, and ultimately melt, slide or sublimate away.
Whistler Blackcomb is a ski resort located in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada. By many measures it is the largest ski resort in North America and has the greatest uphill lift capacity. It features the Peak 2 Peak Gondola for moving between Whistler and Blackcomb mountains at the top. With all of this capacity, Whistler Blackcomb is also often the busiest ski resort, often surpassing 2 million visitors a year.
The climate of Antarctica is the coldest on Earth. The continent is also extremely dry, averaging 166 mm (6.5 in) of precipitation per year. Snow rarely melts on most parts of the continent, and, after being compressed, becomes the glacier ice that makes up the ice sheet. Weather fronts rarely penetrate far into the continent, because of the katabatic winds. Most of Antarctica has an ice-cap climate with very cold, generally extremely dry weather.
Whistler is a resort municipality in the southern Pacific Ranges of the Coast Mountains in British Columbia, Canada. Approximately 125 km (78 mi) north of Vancouver and 36 km (22 mi) south of Pemberton, it is incorporated as the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW). It has a permanent population of approximately 11,854, as well as a larger but rotating population of seasonal workers.
Intrawest Resorts Holdings, Inc was a developer and operator of destination resorts and a luxury adventure travel company. The company was founded in 1976 as a privately funded real estate development company. In 2006, Intrawest was purchased by Fortress Investment Group, a private equity investment company, which resulted in the company being delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange. Fortress was under financial pressure related to the Intrawest debt, but a new loan with a single lender was completed in April 2010 and all prior lenders were repaid in full.
Haupapa / Tasman Glacier is the largest glacier in New Zealand, and one of several large glaciers which flow south and east towards the Mackenzie Basin from the Southern Alps in New Zealand's South Island.
The Greenland ice sheet is a vast body of ice covering 1,710,000 square kilometres (660,000 sq mi), roughly near 80% of the surface of Greenland.
Chacaltaya is a mountain in the Cordillera Real, one of the mountain ranges of the Cordillera Oriental, itself a range of the Bolivian Andes. Its elevation is 5,421 meters (17,785 ft). Chacaltaya's glacier — which was as old as 18,000 years — had an area of 0.22 km2 (0.085 sq mi) in 1940, which had been reduced to 0.01 km2 (0.0039 sq mi) in 2007 and was completely gone by 2009. Half of the meltdown, as measured by volume, took place before 1980. The final meltdown after 1980, due to missing precipitation and the warm phase of El Niño, resulted in the glacier's disappearance in 2009. The glacier was located about 30 kilometers (19 mi) from La Paz, near Huayna Potosí mountain.
A terminal moraine, also called end moraine, is a type of moraine that forms at the terminal (edge) of a glacier, marking its maximum advance. At this point, debris that has accumulated by plucking and abrasion, has been pushed by the front edge of the ice, is driven no further and instead is deposited in an unsorted pile of sediment. Because the glacier acts very much like a conveyor belt, the longer it stays in one place, the greater the amount of material that will be deposited. The moraine is left as the marking point of the terminal extent of the ice.
Snowmaking is the production of snow by forcing water and pressurized air through a "snow gun", also known as a "snow cannon". Snowmaking is mainly used at ski resorts to supplement natural snow. This allows ski resorts to improve the reliability of their snow cover and to extend their ski seasons from late autumn to early spring. Indoor ski slopes use snowmaking. They can generally do so year-round as they have climate-controlled environments.
The retreat of glaciers since 1850 affects the availability of fresh water for irrigation and domestic use, mountain recreation, animals and plants that depend on glacier-melt, and, in the longer term, the level of the oceans. Deglaciation occurs naturally at the end of ice ages, but glaciologists find the current glacier retreat is accelerated by the measured increase of atmospheric greenhouse gases—an effect of climate change. Mid-latitude mountain ranges such as the Himalayas, Rockies, Alps, Cascades, and the southern Andes, as well as isolated tropical summits such as Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, are showing some of the largest proportionate glacial losses. Excluding peripheral glaciers of ice sheets, total global glacial losses were likely 5500 gigatons over 1993–2018.
Hunter Mountain is a ski resort located in Greene County, New York about three hours northwest of New York City in the town of Hunter, New York. It features a 1,600-foot (488 m) vertical drop.
A surface lift is a type of cable transport for snow sports in which skiers and snowboarders remain on the ground as they are pulled uphill. While they were once prevalent, they have been overtaken in popularity by higher-capacity and higher-comfort aerial lifts, such as chairlifts and gondola lifts. Today, surface lifts are most often found on beginner slopes, small ski areas, and peripheral slopes. They are also often used to access glacier ski slopes because their supports can be anchored in glacier ice due to the lower forces and realigned due to glacier movement.
The Morteratsch Glacier is the largest glacier by area in the Bernina Range of the Bündner Alps in Switzerland.
The Peak 2 Peak Gondola is a tricable gondola lift at Whistler Blackcomb Resort in Whistler, British Columbia, linking Whistler Mountain's Roundhouse Lodge with Blackcomb Mountain's Rendezvous Lodge. It is the first lift to join the two side-by-side mountains. It held the world record for the longest free span between ropeway towers—3.03 kilometres until 2017 when the Eibsee Cable Car exceeded it by 189m. It is still the highest point above the ground—436 metres The Peak 2 Peak Gondola was built by the Doppelmayr Garaventa Group in 2007 and 2008 at a cost of CDN$51 million. The Peak 2 Peak Gondola is the first Doppelmayr "3S" tri-cable lift in North America; there are four similar but smaller lifts in Europe which were built in 1991, 1994, 2002, 2004 and 2010 in Switzerland, Austria, France and Germany. Whistler-Blackcomb has touted the gondola as an iconic attraction and uses it to transport skiers in the winter months as well as sightseers year round.
The Spearhead is a 2,457 m (8,061 ft) peak in the Garibaldi Ranges of British Columbia, Canada, and is one of the main summits of the Blackcomb Mountain portion of the Whistler Blackcomb ski resort, located at the apex of the Blackcomb and Spearhead Glaciers, which is named for it. It also is the namesake of the Spearhead Range, which is the short range flanking the north side of Fitzsimmons Creek and ending on its northwest end at Blackcomb Mountain. The mountain's name was officially adopted on August 27, 1965, by the Geographical Names Board of Canada.
The Mount Buller Alpine Resort is a ski resort located on Mt Buller in the Australian state of Victoria.
Gaper Day is a mountain tradition that takes place in ski resorts across North America. It is the day when locals can dress in the most ridiculous outfits and pretend to be like their gaper counterparts. Their getup can range from no or very limited clothing to the most retro ski attire there is. It is like the April Fools' Day of the mountain. It normally occurs around April, when the snow starts melting and the temperatures are warmer.
Eklutna Glacier is a land terminating glacier in Chugach State Park and the Chugach Mountains near Anchorage, Alaska. Runoff from Eklutna Glacier contributes to Eklutna Lake, the main source of drinking water for the Anchorage community as well as hydroelectric power via the Eklutna Hydroelectric Project. However, Eklutna Glacier is shrinking in response to climate change which will inevitably affect downstream water resources. Eklutna Glacier is also known by the Dena'ina name: Idlu Bena Li'a.