When Glacier House was opened in Rogers Pass, tourists could take the trail and stay in the hotel.   Swiss guides took visitors out to climb the peaks and visitors could walk to the toe of the Great Glacier in 45 minutes.   Historical photos and glacialogical research shows the extent of the Glacier and its retreat over the last 115 years.   In the 1890’s the Great Glacier Trail was cleared and the trail ended at the toe of the glacier.   Today we follow the same trail and arrive at the scoured bedrock well below the ice.

Each year we hike the Great Glacier Trail and arrive at the end, at a tongue of exposed bedrock next to a meltwater stream.   The glacier is out of sight above.   For a better view, we go out onto the smooth rock slabs.   Indeed, this is as far as most hiker ever go.  For many years, we have chosen to scramble up the rock to the toe of the glacier on a difficult route.   The ice has only been off this rock for 100 years so it has not weathered much.   At the lowest part of the exposed rock, a few plants and trees now grow in the crevices and some gravels have been washed down my meltwater streams.   Red lichens have grown on the polished rock at the bottom end.

As we climb up the rock toward the ice, the higher areas are bare and the route becomes more challenging.   Ragged rock ridges makes traversing difficult.   Along this route, the effects of glacial plucking are seen everywhere.   The friction of the ice on the rock causes some melting and the water infiltrates the cracks, freezes and breaks the rock, which is then transported down the mountain over centuries.   We can see striation (rocks pulled under the ice, scraping the surface) and polishing of surfaces.

At the top of the exposed bedrock section, a bit of snow sits at the foot of the ice and some gravels sits on the ice, fallen from cliffs and carried down by the ice over decades.   In later summer, snows melt and leave the ice exposed, bluish and crevassed.   It is never wise to cross a glacier without a rope so we usually content ourselves to step onto the ice to take some pictures, but then we return back down the rock.   On one of these solo descents in August a hailstorm came up and besides getting drenched, the pellets coated the rock making the surface impossibly slippery.   Late in the day, I spend much of the time on my rear end trying to get down.   The rock route is not recommended in wet conditions.

The route up the bedrock to the glacier is not for everyone.   Great care must be taken a;; the way.   An alternate route is to take the steep Perley Rock Trail (link).   On another trip, we hiked to the top of the Glacier Crest Trail, then scrambled down to the edge of the ice for a round trip (a difficult route).

The Illecillewaet Glacier covers about 9 square km high in the Donald Range and averages about 110 m thick,  but much of it is high above our view.   We can see parts of it from various hikes in the area, but we can also climb the rock to witness the recession of the Great Glacier.