PEAK TO PEAK — Saint Mary’s Glacier was declared extinct in September of 2026 after a prolonged period of low snowpack, drought, and high temperatures.

This inanimate object could have formed as early as 11,000 years ago at the end of the Pleistocene era. Year in and year out over the eons, it collected snow blowing down from the James Peak tundra and fed lakes and downstream rivers with its lifegiving waters. Now it is no more.

Saint Mary’s wasn’t really a glacier. The geological term for it is a semi-permanent or permanent snowfield because it lacked the mass and movement of a true glacier. It was discovered and named by Israel Rowe around 1880 while he was on a hunting expedition.

The town of Alice, named after Alice Taylor, the wife of a local mine official, was established nearby at about the same time. It would grow to become one of the largest mining camps on the Fall River. Now it is a ghost town with summer cabins and a few hardy winter residents.

In the modern era, Saint Mary’s was a popular spot to hike to, and for diehard winter sports enthusiasts it was a place along the Front Range to get some summer turns in on sun-cupped snow. It was popular enough that paid parking was established at the trailhead.

Hiking to the top of James Peak from Gilpin County used to be fairly simple, by driving up past the Mammoth Gulch campground to the parking spot above James Peak and Little Echo Lakes. The deterioration of the Forest Service road over the years rendered it impassable to typical four-wheel-drive vehicles, which left Saint Mary’s Glacier as the easiest route to the James Peak summit.

The route involved hiking up the glacier for about a quarter of a mile and over 500 feet of vertical. If the snow was hard, which was typical on early morning hikes, boot spikes were used to prevent slipping and sliding down the glacier and over the edge. Helicopter medical evacuations for serious falls were not uncommon during the hiking season.

The Saint Mary’s route is still the easiest route to the highest peak in Gilpin County. But the romance of hiking up the glacier is gone, replaced by picking one’s way through rocks that haven’t felt the heat of sunshine for eons.

Downstream ecosystems will be impacted by the disappearance of the glacier and the waters that flowed down to them. Can they adapt, or will they also disappear, to be replaced by arid landscapes in the Clear Creek watershed?

Tom Bellinger, affiliate professor of Environmental Science in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Metropolitan State University of Denver, said, “These glaciers are the canary in the coal mine.” While the snowfield will likely reform during wet winters, it will also disappear more frequently during drought years.

The other glaciers in the state, like the Arapaho Glacier in the Indian Peaks Wilderness, are also at risk of disappearing altogether in the next 30 to 50 years. This will have an impact on all the downstream users, including cities, agriculture, and recreational areas.

The joy and trepidation of venturing onto Saint Mary’s Glacier and feeling a cool breeze blowing across the snow on a warm summer day has been replaced by the sobering realization that this iconic geologic structure has disappeared in our lifetimes.