The St. Mary’s Glacier in Clear Creek County is completely gone, but the state’s biggest glacier, in Boulder’s backyard, is still hanging on as hot, dry weather ravages glaciers and permanent snowfields across the state.
Last winter’s record-low snowpack and Colorado’s hottest summer on average decimated St. Mary’s Glacier — technically a snowfield despite its name — causing it to disappear for the first time in at least 100 years. Those conditions are also shrinking Colorado’s largest remaining glacier, the Arapaho Glacier, in Boulder County’s Indian Peaks Wilderness.
Considered small by glacial standards, the Arapaho Glacier was about 0.17 square kilometers in size, or about 32 football fields, in January of this year. Scientists don’t yet have an updated estimate of its size or elevation change. On a clear day in Boulder, from a vantage point far enough east, the glacier can be seen sitting between the South Arapaho Peak and North Arapaho Peak…