Oregon Glacier Observation Station

St Helens lost the top 2000 feet of the mountain back then. It is considerably shorter.

I came back from school on Monday over the Marquem bridge when it was clear. Right now Mt Hood has an impressive load of snow up there. back in September it was mostly bare rock.

When I was a young un, back in the days when at least some folks was decent, Mt Hood had a large load of ice year round, even in the drought year of 1975.

But it wasn't that long ago that glaciers were all the way down to the valley floor as far south as Roseburg. There are moraines from back then with all kinds of interesting rocks that came from far away.

A post like this is invaluable compared to a link. In all seriousness, relating ones life and what they see, is great stuff. Youtube videos, articles in the mainstream media are vapid, useless sources compared to this post. Not that this post has the mystery of the world revealed, but its honest information.

Links have a purpose but unless you can relate a bit of your life, a link means nothing.
 
Relate the disappearance of Oregons snowfields and glaciers to personal observation? Sure. One of my great-grandfathers had a gold claim up Canyon Creek in Eastern Oregon, prior to 1870. He and his brother used the money made to buy land near Prairie City and establish two ranchs. My grandfather was born in 1888, and lived until 1979. I have lived in Oregon and Washington the whole of my life, 67 years. My grandfather told me that when he was growing up, and until the end of WW1, that the winter weather in that area was far more severe, with much more snow. Between the wars, the weather not only got warmer, but they recieved less of a snow pack in the winter, and it went off sooner. A trend that has continued to the present.

When I was young, and my parents were traveling in Oregon and Washington, I remember that there was far more snow in the summer on our snowcapped mountains. You did not see mostly rock at the tops as you do today on all but Rainer.

From the time I started hiking and prospecting in the Cascades in the mid-60s, I have seen the tree line moving up as much as 500 ft. vertically in some of the mountains that I have hiked from time to time.
 

New Topics

Forum List

Back
Top