Hike to a Hanging Glacier

When the sun finally came out after I did the baking we decided to take a drive up a windy switch back road to hike to see the Angel Glacier on Mt. Edith Carvel.  The road was brand new and smooth which made the back & forth turns bearable.  Of course the scenery was spectacular even in the clouds. This type of glacier is called "hanging" because it just kind of hangs there on the side of a mountain rather than the big Athabasca type that fills an entire valley with a glacier.

You can see the trail along the left side where we made the short –about 1 mile hike out to the glacier.  It was amazing.  As we were hiking up there Dad said “look at that waterfall”.  When I turned around to see it I could not see a waterfall.  We were confused.  As we walked further on the mystery was explained when we heard a loud booming and could see the snow & ice fall off from the glacier and pour down the mountain looking just like a waterfall and then stopping. Here is an attempt to show this with pictures of the same view with and without the “glacier-fall”.

With the snow & ice falling.

Same view a few minutes later when it had stopped. 

Dad walked on out on the rock field to get some more pictures of the small lake pond at the base of the glacier.  It had small ice bergs in it. 

I would have liked to have been there to see them fall!  As I sat on the rock and waited for more falling action I could see the clouds and sky getting darker and darker.  I did not want to leave Dad and head back to the car but you know him – just one more picture.  He finally came moseying back as the raindrops began to fall.  We started hiking back as fast as we could but by the time we got to the car we were soaked to the skin.