Grasshopper Glacier is located in

Shoshone National Forest Shoshone National Forest ( ) is the first federally protected National Forest in the United States and covers nearly in the state of Wyoming. Originally a part of the Yellowstone Timberland Reserve, the forest is managed by the United States ...

, in the US state of

Wyoming Wyoming () is a U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the south ...

on the east of the

Continental Divide A continental divide is a drainage divide on a continent such that the drainage basin on one side of the divide feeds into one ocean or sea, and the basin on the other side either feeds into a different ocean or sea, or else is endorheic, not ...

in the

Wind River Range The Wind River Range (or "Winds" for short) is a mountain range of the Rocky Mountains in western Wyoming in the United States. The range runs roughly NW–SE for approximately . The Continental Divide follows the crest of the range and inclu ...

. Grasshopper Glacier is in the

Fitzpatrick Wilderness The Fitzpatrick Wilderness is located in Shoshone National Forest in the U.S. state of Wyoming. The wilderness was originally known as the Glacier Primitive Area, but was redesignated a wilderness in 1976. Overview U.S. Wilderness Areas do not all ...

, and is part of the largest grouping of glaciers in the American

Rocky Mountains The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico in ...

. The glacier flows north, and glacial runoff supplies water to Grasshopper Creek, flowing eventually into the Wind River. The glacier shares a glacial margin with

Klondike Glacier Klondike Glacier is in Shoshone National Forest, in the U.S. state of Wyoming on the east of the Continental Divide in the Wind River Range. Klondike Glacier is in the Fitzpatrick Wilderness, and descends from the northeastern slopes of Pedestal ...

, located to the south. The glacier is named for

grasshopper Grasshoppers are a group of insects belonging to the suborder Caelifera. They are among what is possibly the most ancient living group of chewing herbivorous insects, dating back to the early Triassic around 250 million years ago. Grasshopp ...

s that have been found entombed in the ice. Between September 6 and 10, 2003, a

glacial lake outburst flood A glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) is a type of outburst flood caused by the failure of a dam containing a glacial lake. An event similar to a GLOF, where a body of water contained by a glacier melts or overflows the glacier, is called a jö ...

(GLOF) was recorded when the

proglacial lake In geology, a proglacial lake is a lake formed either by the damming action of a moraine during the retreat of a melting glacier, a glacial ice dam, or by meltwater trapped against an ice sheet due to isostatic depression of the crust around the ...

at the head of the glacier burst through a glacial dam, and water from the lake carved a trench down the center of the glacier for over a half-mile (.8 km). An estimated 650 million gallons of water were released in four days, raising the flow level of Dinwoody Creek from per second to per second, as recorded at a gauging station downstream. Debris from the flood was deposited more than downstream. The GLOF has been attributed to the rapid retreat of the glacier, which has been ongoing since the glacier was first accurately measured in the 1960s.

References

See also