Review of Robert William Sanford's Our Vanishing Glaciers:The Snows of Yesteryear and the Future Climate of the Mountain West (Rocky Mountain Books, 2017). Review by Ron Dart
I have had for many a decade an interest in the slowly vanishing Illecillewaet Glacier in Rogers Pass (as recorded by the Vaux family)
and the history of Great Glacier Lodge (as the first centre of alpinism in North America). My treks to the Wheeler-Asulkan Huts (and beyond) and Nakimu Caves have revealed much about the disappearing glaciers of which Illecillewaet was a reigning elder at one auspicious moment.
So, I was more than delighted to be sent Our Vanishing Glaciers to review--so much packed into this clarion call of a well-crafted book Glaciers are, in many significant ways, the proverbial canary in the mineshaft. The state of the receding glaciers in our world tells us much about substantive shifts in the climate and augers much warning for the future. The sheer momentum of Our Vanishing Glaciers is the succinct and compact manner that Robert William Sandford highlights how the slow moving glaciers of the past (and the contributions they make via fresh water) are in jeopardy (as are we if we do not awaken to our perilous plight).
Our Vanishing Glaciers in an incisive, textual and visual way unfolds the tale we must all be attentive to in a most convincing manner. There are ten illuminating chapters in the hard cover beauty of a book (each worth reading many times): 1) The Wonder of Water, 2) What Winter Does to Water, 3) Ecology as Defined by Winter Water, 4) How Icefields and Glaciers Form, 5) Canada’s Most Accessible Glaciers: The Icefields Parkway, Athabasca Glacier and the Columbia Icefield, 6) The Death of Peyto Glacier: A Case for More Comprehensive Hydro-Meteorological Monitoring in the Canadian Rockies, 7) The Columbia Icefield Today, 8) Glaciers in a Changing Climate, 9) What We Stand to Lose and 10) Water, Climate and the National Parks Ideal. Both the headings and content of the chapters make it abundantly clear the drift and focus of Sandford’s convincing argument. Our Vanishing Glaciers begins with a general overview of the issues of the wonder of water, the impact of winter on water, ecology and winter water and how icefield and glaciers come into being. Needless to say, the shifting state of the warming earth is one of the main actors in such a drama. But, the beauty and genius of Vanishing Glaciers is the way, once such essential and general topics are covered, the main themes are, rightly so, applied to the glaciers and icefields of the Canadian Rockies. The specificity of such a turning to the Rockies illustrates in ample detail the reality and dire implications of the future climate on the Canadian mountain west.
It is this concentration, again and again, on the Canadian Rocky glaciers and icefields that make Our Vanishing Glaciers a canary test textbook.
There are those who are convinced by arguments of a textual, logical and empirical manner, science being very much the guide and tutor. There are others who need photographs or actual encounters with the issue being pondered and discussed. The textual and scientific approach, appropriately so, does outweigh the visual in Our Vanishing Glaciers, but, wisely, the visual affirms and confirms the larger thesis. There is a fine “Glossary” at book’s end as is there an excellent bibliography of sorts (for those, hopefully, wishing to be more informed on the topic).
I have, since the mid-1970s (after spending a couple of years in Norway with the mountain Sami and in the high alpine in Switzerland in the early 1970s) done many a trip to the glaciers and icefields of the Rockies. One of my 1st trips was on Peyto Glacier in 1975 (so tragic to witness its slow death). I have certainly seen (as have many more astute and committed than I am) the impact on glaciers and the icefields of climate change and the tensions, as Sandford notes in his final chapter, between water, climate and the national parks ideal.
There can be no doubt on this the 150th anniversary of Canada since Confederation that we face challenges not faced in 1867. One of the most obvious and not to be ignored challenges is both climate change and the impact on glaciers and icefields (and, in time, the consequences for us). Our Vanishing Glaciers is an informed and compelling siren call book, framed in an aesthetic yet judicious manner, and should be standard reading for Canadians (and others, of course) concerned with the future of the climate, water, glaciers, icefields and the place of humanity in such a delicate yet real changing world.
montani semper liberi
Ron Dart
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