St. Mary's "Glacier" Vanishes After Colorado's Hottest Summer Ever

One of Colorado’s most popular spots for skiers to earn their turns in the summer and fall has melted out for what seems to be the first time on record.

St. Mary’s Glacier, which is not actually a glacier but a perennial snowfield, located just southeast of James Peak, has long been a spot where skiers hoping to get turns all year have hiked to make a few down the “glacier.” It’s also a popular hiking spot for Front Range residents.

An Idaho Springs resident hiked up to St. Mary’s on Monday, September 14, and found the area where the snowfield usually sits dry, save for a stream of water trickling down the rocks, according to the Aspen Times. Another Colorado resident, who has skied St. Mary’s more than 100 times over the last 30 years, skied the snowfield on September 1. When he returned on September 16, it was gone.

You can see footage of the area where the snowfield was in the video from FOX31 below.

The “glacier” has been around for hundreds of years, replenished by winter snowfall and lasting through each summer. Historic newspapers show records of St. Mary’s back to the late 1800s, when it became a staple of Colorado’s tourism economy. A resort operated at St. Mary’s that included three lifts and a T-Bar, as well as a snack bar and ski rental shop, starting in the 1950s and operating until 1986. A proposal to reopen it as a snowboard resort was drawn up in 2002, but plans ultimately fell through.

St. Mary’s has shrunk slowly throughout the 21st century, as temperatures have trended hotter. 2026 marked Colorado’s hottest summer on record in the last 132 years, according to climate data from NOAA, breaking records set in 1936 and 2021. August in particular saw some of the highest daytime temperatures across the contiguous United States, with an average temperature of 75.6°F and a maximum average daytime temperature of 88.6°F.

Denver, in particular, which is only about an hour from St. Mary’s, recorded 65 days with temperatures at or above 90°F, which is well above the average of 45 days, according to NPR.

Although the snowfield will return when it snows on and below James Peak this winter, the warming climate makes it harder and harder for snowfields like this one to reestablish. Data from NOAA shows that glaciers worldwide are shrinking and disappearing. Climate reference glaciers tracked by the World Glacier Monitoring Service have shown that since 1970, glaciers have lost ice mass equivalent to almost 27.3 meters of liquid water as of 2024.

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