OUTDOORS & REC
B2 — THE OBSERVER & BAKER CITY HERALD
SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 2022
Oregon’s southernmost glacier disappears
By CARISA CEGAVSKE
The (Roseburg) News-Review
Until recently, Ore-
gon’s southernmost glacier
was on Mount Thielsen,
an extinct volcano moun-
tain in the Cascade Range,
east of Diamond Lake in
Douglas County.
But sometime over the
past half decade, Lathrop
Glacier disappeared.
Oregon Glaciers Insti-
tute President Anders
Carlson said Lathrop Gla-
cier was a little less than
half the size of a football
fi eld, just 0.002 square
kilometers in area. It was
Oregon’s smallest glacier.
The glacier formed two
arms going down steep
chutes.
“It looked like a very
vertical water slide at a
theme park, basically,”
Carlson said.
Because of that, it col-
lected avalanche slides,
storing snow “almost like
soda cans in a vending
machine,” he said.
The area is heavily
shaded, with very little
direct sunlight.
It was well set up to
build a glacier in what is
otherwise a hot, dry place
— from a glacier’s point of
view, anyway.
A pool at the east edge
of the moraine at the gla-
cier’s bottom fed Thielsen
Creek and formed a minia-
ture ecosystem.
“A lot of little vegeta-
tion living in a very lush
setting that would not exist
otherwise if there was not
a glacier there giving it
water all summer, when
there’s no snow otherwise
around,” Carlson said.
There’s likely enough
buried ice to keep the creek
going another 10 or 20
years, but then it will dry
up and the little ecosystem
will disappear, he said.
The glacier had prob-
ably been in existence hun-
dreds, maybe thousands of
years.
“Since the Romans or
something like that, there
had probably been some
kind of glacier ice formed
on that area there,” Carlson
said.
But it wasn’t discov-
ered until 1966, when Ted
Lathrop spotted it on a hike.
Lathrop died in 1979, but
The News-Review spoke to
his nephew Ralph Nafziger,
who returned with his uncle
to the Lathrop Glacier in
1968 and returned again
many times in the years
after that.
Nafziger worked as a
geochemist for the U.S.
Bureau of Mines in Albany
until 1996. He also enjoys
hiking.
“I’ve climbed mountains
all over the world, and most
of them had glaciers on
them,” he said.
The year before he
spotted the glacier on
Mount Thielsen, Lathrop
had served as the resident
physician on an expedition
to the Juneau ice fi elds and
learned something about
them.
So when he looked
down the mountain’s steep
north slope, he was pretty
sure that was what he was
seeing.
Nafziger, Lathrop and a
U.S. Forest Service district
ranger took a closer look in
1968.
They followed the
Pacifi c Crest Trail, climbed
up to a ridge and looked
right down.
“It was a sheer drop,
almost 90-degree drop. We
were all young. We rap-
pelled down to the ice on
the glacier,” Nafziger said.
A glacier must be, by
defi nition, moving ice. So
they set up some stakes to
measure the movement.
The next year they
returned and found there
was movement. But all their
stakes had slid down and
U.S. Geological Survey
Lathrop Glacier is the small ice patch shown at center-right, below
the summit of Mount Thielsen, in this photo from September 1987.
were lying in a pile at the
bottom of the glacier.
Since the glacier was
clearly too steep to measure
its exact movements with
stakes, Nafziger resolved to
return regularly and photo-
graph the glacier to record
its changes.
“We had to get there just
at the right time, because if
we got there too early there
was still snow to be melted
off the ice, and we couldn’t
get an idea of how big it
was. If we got there too late,
then the new snow started,”
he said.
Some years there was
new snow as early as Labor
Day. Other years it was the
end of October.
He learned that over
time, the glacier was
shrinking. In 2016, the last
year he saw it, there wasn’t
much of it left. Nafziger
can’t climb anymore for
health reasons, so he never
saw it after that.
The exact date of
Lathrop Glacier’s demise
isn’t known. But in 2020,
when the Oregon Glaciers
Institute visited the site
again, it was gone.
So what was the culprit
in Lathrop Glacier’s disap-
pearance? The chief sus-
pects, according to Carlson,
are climate change and the
brutally hot summer of
2015.
It’s likely, he said, that
they worked together to
melt Lathrop.
The Cascades have
grown signifi cantly warmer
overall thanks to cli-
mate change. The summer
average has risen between
2 and 3 degrees Fahrenheit
since the early 1990s.
“It’s dramatic warming
that is not being seen at
lower elevations,” Carlson
said.
As it gets warmer, the
snowpack melts out earlier.
Then came the summer
of 2015. It was the hottest
summer on record in the
Cascades.
The extra warm summer
was due in part to it being
an El Niño year.
Then, too, there was
the Blob, a “weird warm
water mass” off the coast of
Oregon that both warmed
the air and blocked the
snow, Carlson said.
That year had the lowest
snowpack ever on record.
With Lathrop’s disap-
pearance, the state’s south-
ernmost glacier is now the
Crook Glacier on Broken
Top west of Bend.
While Lathrop Gla-
cier has disappeared, this
doesn’t have to be the end
of its story.
Portland State Univer-
sity Professor Andrew
Fountain’s lifelong love of
snow and ice turned into
a 40-year career studying
glaciers.
He said small glaciers
like Lathrop often disap-
pear one year and reform in
another. “I’d be very sur-
prised if it hadn’t happened
before. On a good snow
year I could see it coming
back.”
Still, he said, 15% of
the glaciers in Oregon and
Washington have disap-
peared since the 1950s, and
climate change is the “dom-
inating force” in why that’s
happened.
Fountain said he recently
submitted a study to the
Journal of Geophysical
Research that suggests the
glaciers of the Olympic
Mountains will largely dis-
appear by 2050 or 2060.
Oregon will still have
some glaciers then, but a
lot of them will be gone,
he said.
“It only dawned on me
a couple of months ago
that, wait a minute, maybe
in 50 years nobody will be
reading my papers because
there’s nothing to read
about,” Fountain said.
Carlson predicted
Lathrop could come back if
humans stop contributing to
climate change.
“We could start cooling
down again if we could
reduce greenhouse gases in
the atmosphere. The state
wants to grow glaciers, and
it wants to have snow,” he
said.
With a cooler climate,
the rain would turn to snow
and the snow would stick
around long enough to form
a glacier.
“It’s not a done deal yet.
We could go back, and the
glaciers will regrow,” he
said.
215 Elm Street La Grande • (541) 963-5440
northwestfurnitureandmattress.com
C lassifieds
Published by The Observer & Baker City Herald - Serving Wallowa, Union and Baker Counties
PLACING YOUR AD IS EASY...Union, Wallowa, and Baker Counties
Phone La
Grande - 541-963-3161 • Baker City - 541-523-3673
On-Line:
www.lagrandeobserver.com
www.bakercityherald.com
SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 2022
Email:
Classifieds@lagrandeobserver.com
Classifieds@bakercityherald.com
110 Announcements
110 Announcements
To Place a Classified Ad
Please email your contact information and
the content to be included in the ad to:
classifieds@bakercityherald.com
If you are unable to email please call:
(541) 523-3673
Deadlines for Classified Ads
4:00 PM two days prior to publication
Tuesday Publication..........Friday by 4 PM
Thursday Publication.....Tuesday by 4 PM
Saturday Publication....Thursday by 4 PM
110 Announcements
PULL TABS
ACCEPTED
AT THE FOLLOWING
BAKER CITY LOCATIONS
∙ Baker City Herald
∙ Dollar Tree
∙ Black’s Distributing
∙ Ryder Bros
∙ VFW
∙ Baker Elk’s Lodge
∙ Main Event
∙ Lefty’s Tap House
∙ Baker City Fire Dept.
∙ Haines Sell-Rite
∙ Idle Hour
∙ Salvation Army
You can enjoy extra vacation
money by exchanging idle items
in your home for cash ... with an
ad in classified.
DEADLINES:
LINE ADS:
Tuesday: 8:30am Monday
Thursday: 8:30 am Wednesday
Saturday: 8:30 am Friday
DISPLAY ADS:
2 Days Prior to
Publication Date
114 Self-Help
Group Meetings
NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS
541-805-2229
neo-na.org
AA MEETINGS
Wednesday Nights, 7-8:15pm.
Fort Union Grange Hall, corner
of McAlister & Gekeler Lanes.
For more info, call 541-786-1222
AL-ANON
Keep Coming Back Family Group
Mondays, 7 pm
at NKWest, 1208 Adams,
La Grande, OR
NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS
Monday, Thursday, & Friday
at 8pm. Episcopal Church
2177 First St.
Baker City
Drug Problem?
We can help!
Narcotics Anonymous
Phone: 541-805-2229
www.neo-na.org
DO YOU HAVE....HURTS,
HABITS and/or HANG UPS?
12 Step Biblical Support
Harvest Church
3720 Birch St. Baker City
Thurs., 6:30 - 8:30 PM
LA GRANDE
GAMBLERS ANONYMOUS
Every Friday Night @ 5pm, 2107
Gekeler Ln, LG, Church of Christ
basement. For more info please
call 971-219-8411
Someone’s
drinking a problem?
AL-ANON Meetings
are available by phone
Info for Baker City Meetings
Call: 541-239-7323
CELEBRATE RECOVERY
Calvary Baptist Church
Third & Broadway
Baker City, OR
EVERY THURSDAY
6:15 - 8:00 PM
AL-ANON Attitude of Gratitude.
Wednesdays, 12:15-1:30pm.
Faith Lutheran Church.
12th & Gekeler, La Grande
Please wear a mask & practice
social distancing
541-786-2051