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Andrews Glacier may not be the imposing sort of glacier one sees in photos of the world's highest mountain ranges. But it's an amazing chunk of ice just the same.
Our final full day in Rocky Mountain National Park during my 1983 geology field study of the western park lands featured a hike to the popular glacier. The hike was demanding enough and the glacier remote enough to thin the herd of potential visitors, but still reasonable enough so as to attract a notable number of park visitors each day in the summer.
The trip began in the beautiful evergreen forests of the park, but soon climbed above the treeline. A rocky landscape with sparse vegetation, the trail was more challenging to follow without the benefit of trail blazes in the trees. This would prove to be more than an inconvenience to a couple of our classmates.
The trail climbed towards 12,486-foot Otis Peak, and ultimately came upon the top of Andrews Glacier. The footprints on the glacier showed that a number of others had walked either up or down the ice sheet and the long swaths indicated some had slid down as well.
I decided to hike alongside the south side of the glacier for a short distance and thought I had found a trail to do so. But much to my chagrin, the trail ended abruptly at the precipice of a cliff several dozen feet above the glacier.
After finding the safer alternative nearby, I finally found myself on the ice with no other choice but to continue downward on the glacier. The first part was uncomplicated, but I soon found myself sliding toward the tarn (a glacial lake) at the bottom of the glacier.
What at first was no more dangerous than a sled ride, soon became an uncontrolled hurtling toward the lake and its near-freezing water. While it was a fairly warm summer day for the high elevation, I did not relish the possibility of being submerged and soaked, assuming I didn't break a bone on the rocks at the bottom of the glacier.
I dug in as best I could and finally came to a stop a few dozen feet from the edge of the water.
Though the trail and glacier are relatively safe, serious accidents do occur from time to time. A 47-year-old man died on Andrews in 2012 after he slid down the ice and slammed into the rocks at the edge of the tarn. When I took my wild slide, before global warming reduced the size of the glacier, those exposed rocks were likely under the edge of the ice.
Our trip was less eventful, but not without incident. About twenty of us took the hike, each small group at their own pace. When we got back to the trail head, we realized two New York teachers who were hiking together had misread the rock cairns marking the trail. They ended up continuing westward toward Grand Lake on the opposite side of the mountains.
Once the park service helped get everyone in touch, the rescue of our wayward companions sounded like only a minor inconvenience. That is, until we realized the highway route to Grand Lake was twice the 25 miles our adventurers had hiked.
John Frederick (www.johnjfrederick.com) writes on environmental issues twice monthly for the Mirror.