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NEWS
GRINNELL GLACIER, 1926
COVER
MORTON ELROD PHOTO | COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA
has taken repeat photos of Grinnell Gla- cier to see if it’s still moving.
On a clear August morning – a rar- ity this wildfire-filled summer – Fagre swung a loaded backpack over his shoul- der at the trailhead not far from the Many Glacier Hotel and began the six-mile hike to Grinnell. Fagre said he has lost count of how many times he’s been to Grinnell but know he has made at least one trip to the glacier every year since 1996. The
days in the field are always his favorites. “This is a lot more fun than all the other stuff I need to do back at the office,”
he said.
After a few hours of hiking, Fagre
approached an area called Elrod Rock (the same rock Gore changed behind 18 years earlier). The rock is named for nat- uralist Morton J. Elrod, who more than a century ago used it as a landmark to mea- sure how much the glacier had shrunk.
Every time he returned, Elrod measured how many paces it took to get from the rock to the glacier. Back then, it wasn’t a long walk to get to the foot of the glacier, but today it is more than a mile away.
Fagre said the changes at Grinnell over the last 25 years are staggering. When he first started studying the glacier, its face reached 25 feet into the air, but today you’re more likely to bump your knees with the top of it when you approach.
Even a decade ago, the glacier was so large a Maryland man died of hypother- mia when he fell into a 40-foot crevasse.
“It used to feel like a real glacier but it doesn’t seem like much of one now,” Fagre said on the approach. “It looks dif- ferent every year.”
Upon arriving at the glacier, Fagre scarfed down a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then set up his tripod. The process is more complex than you would expect. Fagre used a GPS device to determine the exact spot he stood two years ago for the last repeat photo. Once he finds the location, he puts the tripod down and then takes out a folder of pho- tos to compare the composition of the last frame and the exact location of the tripod two years earlier. Often the act of finding the photo location is much longer than actually taking the photo. But it’s not
“It used to feel like a real glacier but it doesn’t seem like much of one now. It looks different every year.”
DANIEL FAGRE, USGS SCIENTIST IN GLACIER NATIONAL PARK
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