St. Mary's Snowfield Shrinks to 25 Yards for Skiers

Aspen —St. Mary’s Glacier is gone. At least for the month of September.

Jordan Lipp drove his red Ford Bronco up the switchbacks of Fall River Road on Sept. 1 with skis strapped to his roof rack. He arrived at the trailhead near Alice, Colo., expecting a familiar routine. Instead, he found barren rock and a small waterfall where the snowfield usually sits.

Lipp has carried his skis up the 1.3-mile hike to St. Mary’s more than a hundred times over three decades. His first trip was in 1996, right after he moved to Colorado and graduated college. He has maintained a streak of skiing at least once a month for 205 months.

He was not alone in the parking lot. Richard Jones, a Grand Lake resident, was there too. Jones has skied 204 consecutive months at the site.

The two friends hiked up together. Jones recalled his first trip in 2009, when he was one of the only people doing it. He said the crowd has exploded since 2020.

At the Alpine lake, they stopped to look up the valley. Usually, the snowfield is visible from this vantage point. Today, it was not there.

They continued up the trail and ran into Adam Kilgus. He was already on his way down, carrying skis that had seen very little use. Kilgus capped off an 18-year streak on Tuesday.

“Was there anything?” Lipp asked.

“There’s about 25 yards of ice,” Kilgus said. He added that he is planning trips to South America because, unless the current El Niño year mirrors 1982-83, the snow will not be there in September anymore.

Lipp expressed disbelief at how quickly the trendline shifted. He expected his son to be in college when St. Mary’s melted out for good. His son is just starting middle school.

The Vail Daily reported that scientists classify St. Mary’s as a perennial snowfield rather than a glacier. It is one of the easiest patches of year-round snow to access in Colorado.

The shrinking is not an anomaly. It is part of a global pattern. Warm temperatures are reducing snowfields and glaciers worldwide. For local skiers, the practical impact is immediate. The accessible summer skiing that defined a generation of backcountry trips in the Alpine valleys is disappearing faster than predicted.

Lipp has passed the tradition to his 11-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter. They have skied monthly for most of their lives. Now, the calendar is running out.

The short version: The snow is leaving earlier every year. The hike remains the same length, but the destination is shrinking to a sliver of ice.

Read that again. Twenty-five yards of ice. That is not a ski area. That is a puddle with altitude.

Lipp has 205 months on the board. Jones is one month behind him. Kilgus just hit 18 years and is already looking at international flights. The streaks are alive, but the snow that sustains them is not.

The Vail Daily noted that Lipp said it was the first time he drove up Fall River Road without knowing if there would be snow to ski. A week earlier, when he visited with his son, it was the smallest he had ever seen it.

The official statements from climate scientists are consistent: warming fuels the shrinkage. What they don’t say is how fast it hits a specific family’s Saturday morning routine.

Lipp, Jones, and Kilgus are not climate activists. They are neighbors who like to ski in September. Now they have to plan for the fact that September might not offer them anything but rock.

The trendline Lipp expected to stretch until his son’s college years has collapsed into the present tense.

He is still going up there. He just doesn’t know what he will find at the top.