St. Mary’s Glacier has melted out for the first time in recent memory, perhaps for the first time ever, since the last ice age ended. The perennial snowfield that skiers head to for summertime turns has been shrinking more quickly in the summer months over the last few decades. Now, it’s completely gone, taking with it a popular attraction not only for skiers, but also for throngs of summer hikers.
What Happened
Although it is named a glacier, St. Mary’s is technically a “perennial snowfield.” Unlike a glacier, it is never thick or heavy enough to flow.
On a typical summer day, dozens, even hundreds, of people frolicked on the snowfield, sliding on boots or pants, and children throwing slush balls. Skiers carried gear up hundreds of feet for some soft summer turns.
But by late August, following a dismal snow year and the record-setting Colorado drought, all that remained of the glacier were four or five chunks of ice. The largest was 75–80 feet long, 15 feet wide, and 10–15 inches thick.
On Sept. 1, skiers’ reports posted on social media and other outlets showed only the 25-yard patch of ice left, and the smaller patches had completely melted.
Then, sometime between Sept. 1 and 16, that last chunk of skiable ice was no more. The only remnants left were a babbling stream running downhill into St. Mary’s Lake. Wood pieces with PVC pipe, a makeshift rail for skiers to grind on, sat on rock.
One Skier’s Notes About the Glacier
Colorado skier Jordan Lipp has been skiing on St. Mary’s Glacier in the summer months since September 2009. He was able to salvage this season, but just barely.
“I take it it looks like it’ll (the glacier) survive to September 1 for my September ski day, but not to late-September?” he said in an email to GearJunkie Contributor Jonathan Ingraham. “It’s so sad.”
For the better part of 30 years, Lipp has been recording the glacier’s “health,” using a rating system from 0 to 5: (0) Melted Out, (1) One Part Left, (2) Extremely Small, (3) Very Small, (4) Small, (5) Normal.
Lipp’s analysis showed that from 2004 to 2012, St. Mary’s Glacier’s remaining ice rated either a 3, 4, or 5 heading into the Oct. 1–15 time frame. This meant that some ice or snow remained just before new snow usually began to reaccumulate on the glacier as winter ramped up.
From 2012 to 2026, Lipp’s rating began to show more 3s and 2s as early as between the Aug. 1–15 timeframe, showing the glacier was shrinking and breaking into separate pieces earlier and more frequently.
On Sept. 1, Lipp showed Summit Daily reporter Ryan Spencer the condition of St. Mary’s Glacier on his September ski day. He said, in part, that September 2026 will be rated a “0,” meaning the entire snowfield will melt out before new snow replenishes it.
Science Behind the Demise
According to scientists, St. Mary’s Glacier is a perennial snowfield and not a glacier. The current snowfield is a remnant of glaciers that carved out part of the Colorado Rocky Mountains thousands of years ago.
According to a May 2025 article from Rebecca Lindsey at Climate.gov, glaciers worldwide have shrunk every year for the last 37 years, ice mass loss has equated to nearly 27.3 m of liquid water, or the same as losing 30 m (98 feet) of ice off the entire surface of each glacier.
St. Mary’s Glacier is suffering a similar fate.
In an article from Mark Cox at Metro State University of Denver (MSUD) in October 2021, Cox asked Tom Bellinger, an Affiliate Professor of Environmental Science at MSUD, his thoughts about the state of St. Mary’s Glacier.
According to Bellinger, the 14 glaciers of northern Colorado are melting away at “a precipitous rate”… “and that means they are providing a rare, real-time insight into the impact of global warming.”
Cox said St. Mary’s Glacier is among the hardest hit snowfields in Colorado. Bellinger agreed, saying “when I recently saw current (video) of the site, I was amazed, and horrified, by how much it had shrunk in such little time.”
Bellinger also said some of the smaller glaciers would probably be gone in 10 to 20 years, with the larger ones vanishing within 60 years.
A History of St. Mary’s Glacier
From the 1940s to the 1980s, recreation took over at St. Mary’s Glacier from its mining days before World War II, according to reports from the St. Mary’s Glacier website.
A Kansas couple, Hugh and Margaret Black, hiked St. Mary’s Glacier in the late 1930s, fell in love with the surrounding scenery, and built St. Mary’s Glacier Lodge in 1948. A small ski area grew up alongside the lodge, reaching full operation by the mid-1950s, with a T-bar and two rope tows.
Ownership passed through several hands over the following decades, including a 1960s push to subdivide the land into cabin lots and a 1967 rebrand as “St. Mary’s Glacier Lodge and Country Club” under developer Dave Bullert. The ski area finally closed for good in 1986.
From the 1980s to today, the glacier’s retreat has accelerated in parallel with the ski area’s shutdown.
By the 2010s, scientists tracked the snowfield’s shrinkage and projected it could disappear entirely during summer months by the early 2030s, on par with what Bellinger said. The long-predicted disappearance of St. Mary’s Glacier might have arrived ahead of schedule.
