A report in Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper says that the 7,000-year-old Horstman Glacier has lost half its volume in the past century, and that the rate of melt has accelerated in the past decade with more than 10 per cent lost since 1999.
The glacier which re-opens for summer ski and boarding later this month, has not decreased much in surface area, the globe & Mail reports, but has lost a lot of its thickness.
"It's not so much less snow in the winter, it's warmer temperatures in the summer, that's what's eating away at it most," Arthur De Jong, a mountain planner at Whistler-Blackcomb told the paper. "It clearly shows the climate is warming."
Mr De Jong is guiding a new climate change/mountain environment tour in August and September, in which he explains glaciology.
Whistler is reported to be considering trying to grow the glacier again by protecting the remaining ice and adding to it with snowmaking, the summer snowsports business is worth approximately $1m to the resort, the Globe Mail says.
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