The Cowlitz Glacier is on the southeast flank of
Mount Rainier
Mount Rainier (), indigenously known as Tahoma, Tacoma, Tacobet, or təqʷubəʔ, is a large active stratovolcano in the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest, located in Mount Rainier National Park about south-southeast of Seattle. With a s ...
in the
U.S. state
In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sover ...
of
Washington
Washington commonly refers to:
* Washington (state), United States
* Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States
** A metonym for the federal government of the United States
** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...
.
The body of ice covers and has a volume of 6 billion ft
3 (170 million m
3). The glacier starts at an elevation of and flows southeast. An adjacent glacier, the
Paradise Glacier
Paradise Glacier is a glacier on the southeast flank of Mount Rainier in Washington. It covers and contains 0.8 billion ft3 (23 million m3) with Stevens Glacier included. The glacier is bounded to the west by the Muir Snowfield, Anvil Rock and M ...
, is connected to this glacier on its southwest margin. As it flows down the slopes of Mount Rainier it nearly meets up with the
Ingraham Glacier
Ingraham Glacier is on the south-eastern flank of Mount Rainier, in the U.S. state of Washington. The glacier is named for the Mount Rainier enthusiast Edward Sturgis Ingraham. From the summit ice cap, Ingraham Glacier flows east between Gibraltar ...
and during the
Little Ice Age
The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of regional cooling, particularly pronounced in the North Atlantic region. It was not a true ice age of global extent. The term was introduced into scientific literature by François E. Matthes in 1939. Ma ...
, which ended around the year 1850, the two glaciers shared a common terminus.
Meltwater from the glacier drains into the
Cowlitz River
The Cowlitz River is a river in the state of Washington in the United States, a tributary of the Columbia River. Its tributaries drain a large region including the slopes of Mount Rainier, Mount Adams, and Mount St. Helens.
The Cowlitz has a ...
.
History
About 35,000 years ago, the combined Cowlitz and Ingraham glaciers terminated some from Mount Rainier. As the
Ice Age
An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gree ...
ended the glacier retreated north back to Mount Rainier.
[ In recent times, the glacier has retreated and thinned, except for the period between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s, during which the glacier made a notable advance.
]
See also
*List of glaciers in the United States
This is a list of glaciers existing in the United States, currently or in recent centuries. These glaciers are located in nine states, all in the Rocky Mountains or farther west. The southernmost named glacier among them is the Lilliput Glacier ...
References
Glaciers of Mount Rainier
Glaciers of Washington (state)
{{Washington-glacier-stub