Melting glaciers may affect recreation

"The glaciers are attractive to people, but the things that will affect people most, it’s the climate changing," said Daniel Fagre, a research ecologist for the U.S. Geological Survey in the Northern Rockies.

August 1988 was the hottest, driest month Meredith Taylor could remember. That was the year the Yellowstone National Park fires began, eventually burning more than 2 million acres.

Her husband, Tory Taylor, drew a bighorn sheep license, and the couple rode their horses into base camp in the Wind River Range. They’d been there many times before and ran a successful outfitting business out of Dubois.

Meredith knew that the Wind River glaciers, some of the biggest in the Rocky Mountains, were shrinking. But she didn’t expect what she saw: All the snow had melted off the glaciers not far from Gannett Peak, leaving sheets of dark ice colored by dirt and dust. It was so dry, the Taylors couldn’t find any snow to cover half of Tory’s bighorn sheep carcass. They packed half back to camp immediately and tucked the other half between a glacier and rock. When they returned the next day, blow flies had already found the sheep.

Hotter summers and winters were a problem, Meredith knew, but these kinds of changes were personal, not just cautionary articles in scientific journals.

By CHRISTINE PETERSON – Star-Tribune staff writer trib.com |

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