Crowfoot Glacier, Alpine glacier in Banff National Park, Canada
Crowfoot Glacier is an alpine glacier located on the northeastern face of Crowfoot Mountain within Banff National Park. The ice mass stretches across the mountainside and forms a major feature of the Rocky Mountains landscape in this region.
The glacier was named for its three ice lobes, which early explorers thought resembled a crow's foot. Since the end of the Little Ice Age it has retreated and lost one entire lobe, so it no longer looks like the glacier they named. In the 1980s it covered about 1.5 km² and was part of a 5 km² icefield.
The glacier's name comes from its former shape: three ice lobes spreading like a crow's foot. Since one lobe has melted away, the remaining ice no longer matches the outline that early explorers saw and named.
The glacier can be viewed from designated pullouts along the Icefields Parkway, where parking and easy access are available. The best views are from marked viewpoints that require minimal walking.
Crowfoot Glacier once joined the Wapta Icefield; in the 1980s it was treated as part of a smaller icefield of about 5 km², with the glacier itself covering roughly 1.5 km². Runoff from its ice, east of the continental divide, supplies the Bow River.
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