Wedgemount Glacier Update:  

After a two-year absence (knees weren’t working last year), I had a half-day off on work at the Spearheads Hut Project to measure the recession on Overlord Glacier. It is/was 29.4 metres, or an average of 14.7 metres per year in the 2015-17 interval. This is well-above average, though slightly below the values for 2013-2014 and 2014-2015.

Survey at Wedgemount Glacier was assisted by a helicopter ride, courtesy of the Whistler Naturalists Society. On a day of cool breezes and rain, we discovered that the new lake at glacier terminus, that is 440 metres upslope from Wedgemount Lake, had grown in size significantly with large, dirty icebergs floating and grounded in the new basin.  The survey of 2016 was re-checked because of reliability of one compass reading and the possible movement of a cairn marking the 2015 ice position. The new figure for 2015-16 is 36.3 metres (not the 34.8 previously published). For 2016 to 2017, the recession is another 31.2 metres, but the hydrologic right side of the terminus was about 80 metres, hence the enlargement of the lake!

Karl Ricker,

Whistler Naturalists Society