Nevada's Last Glacier

The cirque on the north face of Wheeler Peak holds a glacier. It is the only glacier in Nevada and one of the southernmost glaciers in the entire United States. By the standards of glaciers elsewhere in North America, it is small, a few acres. But it is real ice, meaning it moves, however slowly, under its own weight.

The Wheeler Peak Glacier sits inside a bowl carved by ice during the Pleistocene, when the Great Basin was a colder, wetter place and glaciers occupied the high valleys of the Snake Range and several other Nevada mountain ranges. The last great expansion of those glaciers ended roughly ten thousand years ago. Almost all of them melted. This one did not, sheltered from direct summer sun by the deep north-facing cirque and fed by snow avalanching off Wheeler Peak's upper slopes.

There is an ongoing scientific debate about exactly how to classify it. A portion of the visible ice mass is covered by rock debris that has fallen from the cirque walls, creating what geologists call a rock glacier, a mixture of ice and rock that moves differently from clean ice. Whether the debris-covered portions should be counted as part of the glacier or treated separately is a technical argument about categories. The ice is not debated. It is there, a remnant of a much colder age.

What is debated is how much longer it will last. Studies of the glacier's extent over time suggest it is retreating. Climate projections for the Great Basin predict warmer and drier conditions through the twenty-first century. Some researchers have suggested the Wheeler Peak Glacier may not survive past the middle of this century. Others note that its sheltered position in the cirque has buffered it against warming that has eliminated glaciers at comparable elevations elsewhere in the West. What is measurable is that the ice visible today is smaller than the ice documented in older photographs.

You can hike to it from the bristlecone trailhead. The trail is about four and a half miles round-trip from the upper parking area.